The key to your responsiveness is how well you can interact and communicate with your suppliers. Unfortunately, most manufacturers lack the ability to pass on critical information to their suppliers in a timely and accurate manner.
Even if you invested in an ERP or supply chain planning solution, odds are that you’re still sending your suppliers paper copies of your material requirements each week. And every day a small army of people in your company update that information by faxing and calling your suppliers.
The critical information you and your suppliers need about material requirements, production plans, commitments and shipment status is locked in mountains of paper. Or worse, the information doesn’t exist anywhere.
This costly manual process of sharing information slows your responsiveness – shipments arrive late because of confusion surrounding changing due dates; the wrong quantity of supplies comes in because of data entry errors.
You might have problems with your supply chain responsiveness if you answer, “Yes” to the following questions.
- Do you rely on phone calls and faxes to communicate material requirement changes to your suppliers?
- Do you have to expedite supplier orders in order to meet customer demands?
- Are you having problems implementing strategic replenishment processes, such as VMI?
- Do your suppliers miss shipments?
- Do you have to consult lots of paper to find out what’s happening in your supply chain?
Click here to find out how VendorSite can help you increase your supply chain responsiveness.