Posts Tagged ‘Distributor’
The concept of a supply chain seems to suggest strong links between supplier, manufacturer, distributor, and customer. But supply chain logistics professionals know this is often far from the truth. Even inside an individual company, the links between functions are weak. In the same plant, the shipping dock is not coordinated with the production planner, purchasing is not aligned with manufacturing and warehousing feels that everything flows down hill from production. We will look at some of the links in this internal supply chain and how they impact logistics performance and then introduce a new class of system that can plan across silos.
Production and distribution even in the same plant are often not tied to each other. Distribution complains that they are the recipients of push from manufacturing to distribution. In the internal supply chain, the logistics of push is hard to deal with. Each hour the warehouse is faced with decisions of where to put product as it arrives off the line. This is far from a linked activity.
Purchasing and manufacturing seem to always be a dysfunctional link in the supply chain. Manufacturing mostly wants the status quo while purchasing seeks to change to get closer to the perfect supplier. Often, however, the decisions are not shared as independent departments see little logistics synergy. The result is often service disruptions and higher logistics costs.
Price does not equate to value. This tenet is true in logistics as it is in other areas. Unfortunately, the transportation procurement groups often don’t heed the transportation operations team. The result of this is losses like smaller payloads for the so-called cheap carriers. This excess cost shows up in total cost but not in the price.