Customer-Centric Supply Chain Transformation

To truly transform your supply chain into one that is focused around what the end-customer needs, you need a plan that addresses a range of organizational factors, including vision, strategic intent, behaviour, technology, organization, processes, and metrics.

Six steps that can help create a customer-centric supply chain:

1. Supply Chain Health Check. An end-to-end maturity analysis can evaluate the current state of the existing supply chain. The health check includes a survey of customer expectations, an audit of stakeholder beliefs, and interviews with business executives to gauge their commitment to improvement. The results help businesses identify benchmarks and key trends, and understand the opportunity for supply chain optimization.
2. Supply Chain Strategy and Innovation. How sustainable and adaptable is your supply chain, and what is your vision for the future? Answering these questions requires understanding a range of metrics, such as: segmentation; optimization; inventory versus service; make versus buy; cost versus service; flexibility and agility; variability; complexity; resilience, risk and disaster response; organization and talent management; and performance metrics.
3. Network Design, Optimization, and Agility. This step is focused on making the supply chain network more agile. It tackles areas such as logistics outsourcing and transportation network optimization. It also examines distribution footprint, logistics, and analytics. The end result is a more efficient supply chain and a vision for future network capabilities.
4. Demand Signal and Planning. The next goal is to create a supply chain driven by demand. This requires careful sales and operation planning, and automation; demand planning, forecasting, and shaping; and supply planning. It also considers manufacturing scheduling and end-to-end data integration.
5. Inventory Turns and Availability. A customer-centric supply chain should follow best practices in inventory management, analytics, and statistics. Excellence in this area can optimize inventory, address demand volatility, and improve product availability and customer service.
6. Lean Supply Chain Execution. The final step in creating a customer-centric supply chain evaluates warehouse and transport operations to improve flow and eliminate waste. A key step here is synchronizing the supply chains of suppliers and other partners.

Written by: Clare Mansbridge 

Clare is part of the production team here at Akolade. 

Clare offers more than 6 years of experience in content creation within the events industry. 

You could say she is a champion of education events. 

She is passionate about social justice, diversity & inclusion, arts, sustainable forms of transport and community building.