Supply Chain Management

For delivering customer value, optimal supply chain performance, and sustainable advantage

What is Supply Chain Management?

Supply Chain Management is the handling of the flow of goods and services between businesses and locations, including the movement and storage of raw materials, inventory, and finished goods, as well as end to end order fulfilment from point of origin to the consumer.

To cope with the constant increase in customer requirements, the implementation of an efficient and agile supply chain is a real competitive advantage for companies. Organizations that optimize their supply chains improve their perfect order rating by an average of 17%, at the same time reducing supply chain costs by up to 50%. In today’s economy, that’s an advantage worth taking.

Our approach to Supply Chain Management combines 'blue-sky thinking' - creative brainstorming without limits - with the realities of your existing supply chain footprint and infrastructure; it’s a practical, proven approach, which brings substantial performance benefits.

How Mature is Your Organization's True Level of Maturity in Supply Chain Management?

Before embarking on any performance improvement program, it is imperative to identify your business’s true level of maturity. The Oliver Wight Maturity Model characterizes a business as being in one of four key phases of maturity: Co-ordination, Business Process Control, Automation, or Integration. Assess your business maturity in Supply Chain Management using our free online self-assessment tool.

Assess Your Business Maturity

How you can benefit from Supply Chain Management

  • Align your supply chain design and capability, using performance measures as part of your business strategy

  • Make supply chain segmentation decisions that effectively support your value proposition

  • Identify vulnerabilities and opportunities in your supply chain plans and use scenarios to create alternative plans to mitigate or exploit

  • Develop collaborative and profitable relationships throughout your extended supply chain

  • Ensure that your supply chain strategy supports all your marketing and sales strategies

  • Increase your agility to reconfigure the supply chain for improved competitive advantage

  • Reduced cost-to-serve

  • Increased focus on delivering customer value

  • Improved order performance

  • Understand where value is being created and destroyed

  • Optimise inventory and asset investment

You should consider Supply Chain Management for your organization if:

  • You have excessive inventory

  • You are experiencing ongoing service issues

  • You are not able to effectively respond to changing customer needs

  • You have high costs

  • You are struggling to produce to plan or seem to be constantly changing plans

  • You are under-utilising planning software

  • You are dealing with poor supplier performance

  • You have confrontational relationships with supply chain partners

How we can help

  • A diagnostic assessment of the effectiveness of your current Supply Chain Management process, including identifying performance issues

  • Benchmarking your supply chain performance using your own data to quantify your current position and compare with best-in-class

  • Change management – planning, monitoring and supporting the implementation of change and its impact on your people

  • Transfer of our knowledge to your people so they can create and manage an effective Supply Chain Management process

  • Coaching your Supply Chain Management process users as you introduce new ways of working

  • Facilitate the design of a Supply Chain Management process to best fit your organisation and its needs

  • Scoping of an action plan to address issues and take advantage of opportunities identified, including resourcing, timelines and performance improvement expectations

  • Assessment of your Supply Chain Management process and validation that it has achieved Class A level of effectiveness – firmly embedded as the ‘way you do things’ and delivering the benefits you wanted

Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management resources to help you improve


Courses

White papers & case studies

Books

Videos & webinars

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Upcoming courses

Workshops

23 - 25
Nov 2022

France

French Supply Chain Management Workshop


More information +

Supply Chain Management

Latest white papers & case studies

Conception et Optimisation de la Supply Chain – Bâtir des relations entre les différents acteurs de la supply chain

Dans le contexte mondial actuel d’incertitude économique et d’accroissement continu de la concurrence, le client reste le roi. Bien que l’argent se fasse parfois rare, les clients demandent toujours un meilleur service, plus de valeur et des prix plus com

Avoid Being a ‘One Dimensional’ Business

Lloyd Snowden shares the importance of multiple concepts and explains why businesses must avoid being 'One Dimensional'.

Reduce, reuse, recycle – building a sustainable supply chain

Until a few years ago, if you’d asked any senior leader or executive the most important contributing factor to the ‘sustainability’ of their business they would most likely have answered that it was rate of growth and financial profitability.

Inventory Is Not a Problem; It is a Symptom An Executive Overview

The president of a client company asked the all too common question: “We have an inventory problem! We always seem to have too much, too little, or the wrong mix.

The role of Supply Chain in the 21st century

In today’s fast-paced world, businesses are battling to win the short-lived affections of an increasingly fickle customer base, as consumer appetite for newer, better and brighter offerings, cheaper and more quickly never seems to be satisfied.

Supply Chain Design & Optimization - Building Supply Chain Relationships

Keeping your own business under control and simply relying on your customers and suppliers to do the same in today's business environment, is no longer sufficient.

Managing the Private Label Supply Chain

Today, most manufacturers are either already engaged in supplying private label products, or wrestling with the decision as to whether they should introduce a private label strategy.

Laying the Foundation - Six Steps to 95 Percent Inventory Record Accuracy

The world-class standard for inventory record accuracy today stands at 99.5 percent--as a minimum. The harsh reality is that most companies still are still are struggling with inaccurate inventory records.

Kanban and Enterprise Resource Planning - The True Understanding of Lean

This white paper debunks the myths that Kanban and Enterprise Resource Planning are mutually exclusive. The authors explain how to use both together to create a demand driven system that is responsive to demand volatility and uncertainty.

Gearing up for growth - Speed, agility and cost-efficiency; the future of the automotive supply chain

Fuelled by PPI compensation windfalls, attractive finance deals and shorter buying cycles (due to perceived savings from the efficiency of new cars), the automotive market at last appears to be on the road to recovery following six years of decline.

Framing the Problem Statement - Investments in the Extended Supply Chain Should Not Be Made Blindly

In this detailed article, Jim Matthews emphasizes the importance of determining the root causes of issues in order to develop appropriate solutions. Build trust, develop cross-operational teamwork, and enhance communication to restore customer confidence.

The Lean Enterprise

To become lean in business, we must remove fat or waste to leave just those activities that add value to either the external or internal customer. However, understanding what is of value and applying this to all aspects of a business is difficult.

Supply Chain Management

Latest videos and webinars

Oliver Wight Conference Highlights

Highlights from Oliver Wight's third annual conference in 2016.

Oliver Wight Event For Healthcare Leaders

Highlights from Oliver Wight's 2018 event for healthcare leaders

Brexit: What next for British companies?

With the future still full of uncertainty how can British companies plan ahead?

Brexit Conference Highlights 2018

Highlights from Oliver Wight's 2018 conference about the impact of Brexit on businesses and their supply chains.

Creating Organisations of the Future, Today

Highlights from our unique workshop which took place in November 2019, focusing on the future of Integrated Business Planning, known as Enterprise Business Planning.

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Hands-on application workshops tailored to meet your organization's specific business objectives

Integrated Business Planning

For integrating functional plans, deploying business strategy, and driving business management

Supply Chain Management

For delivering customer value, optimal supply chain performance, and sustainable advantage

Demand Management

Creating, influencing, and managing demand

Product & Portfolio Management

For driving growth and margin through effective planning and management of your product and service portfolio

Integrated Tactical Planning

For dynamic management of product, demand, and supply plan execution

Analyze. Redefine. Transform.

For working through change and identifying key business issues and opportunities

Reset. Resilience. Results.

For focused and rapid intervention

Enterprise Business Planning

For breaking down functional silos, leveraging technology, and extending IBP benefits