Manufacturers have been threatened by ongoing issues with supply chain risk and resilience, from pandemic forced closed supplier to rocketing costs in freight. There is a need to reduce that risk and become more resilient to improve cash flow and productivity. This can be done by digging deeper into your procurement spend data.
The virtual webinar hosted by Make UK explored ‘Delivering Effective Supply Chains: Increasing Productivity, Profit and Resilience.’ Joined by our speaker Mark Wood from Alliance Procurement Solutions.
What was uncovered?
Hearing from Mark that “significant cost savings can be made by looking at your spend data.” Commenting like a characteristically experienced purchasing consultant, as a pound saved on spend is straight off the bottom line. Utilising the difference of approach between placing transactions for raw materials and actually implementing a collaborative procurement strategy. Mark explained how digging deeper into the spend activity data across all suppliers, locations, transactions and currency exposure can be beneficial. Informing wider purchasing actions that could improve cash flow, reduce costs improve quality, reduce risk and ultimately become more resilient.
Instigating potential areas of action such as leverage through consolidation, productivity in back office functions, identifying downstream supply chain risk, adapting payment terms and improving supplier performance through service level agreements.
APS expertly recommended to:
- Map out your supply chain risks by spend type and supplier
- Mitigate risk through technology, stock or sourcing strategies
- Prioritise, plan and resource
Approaching your spend strategically is a collaborative process that requires cross functional departments to work together in developing an effective supply chain. Working across teams to implement these actions and achieve your objectives of becoming more resilient takes an open culture and strong stakeholder management. As the new chance to reassess production in the UK arises, the new opportunity to re-shore where appropriate and profitably means we must operate on effective and collaborating supply chains. Support is available from organisations like universities, the MTC and APS via Make UK membership.