Network design and optimised transport deliver improved performance, lower costs and supply chain resilience.
Supply chain management is constantly facing new challenges as global trade grows more volatile and complex. Keeping costs under control while increasing agility and meeting demand is a critical challenge – and crucial to long-term success.
So how can businesses strategically optimise their supply chains for cost reduction while maintaining high performance and quality standards?
What are the biggest challenges facing supply chain right now, especially considering the challenging past few years?
To name a few, we’ve had a pandemic, global conflicts, increased gas prices and material shortages. And looking back further, there’s globalisation and supply chain digitisation.
Supply chain is a completely different world today compared to 10 years ago. With all this change, businesses need a strategy to ensure a resilient supply chain at the lowest reasonable cost.
And adopting cost optimisation in supply chain is one of the key elements.
Transportation optimisation is critical for cost optimisation and supply chain resilience. Early planning is essential to get these benefits.
For example, transportation factors aren’t generally reflected in material planning, but considering constraints earlier in planning processes offers significant benefits. Before the scheduling agreements are set, there is more flexibility for optimisation.
Real transportation constraints like schedules, capacity and incompatibilities can be considered along with inventory levels.
This early planning avoids last-minute changes and costly back-and-forth communication to correct plans. And the flexibility lets businesses maximise the utilisation of individual shipments for cost-efficient transportation while still meeting customer demand.
4PL Supply Chain as a Service enables this flexibility.
Source: Supplychaindigital
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