Automotive industry Archives - Supply Chain Institute

Factory Fires, Mergers & Acquisitions, Business Sales, Factory Disruptions, and Leadership Transitions rank as the top five supply chain disruptions in the first six months of 2021, with life sciences, healthcare, and the automotive industry being most impacted.

Records are to be broken, say observers of the recently-concluded Olympics. But the dark side of such comfortable declarations was evident in global supply chains this year.

According to data released by Resilinc, a global leader in the supply chain risk monitoring space, human-caused supply chain disruptions are rising overall, with the amount of factory fires up 150% (when comparing the first half of 2021 to the first half of 2020).

This year is on track to have the most factory fires ever reported. The uptick is due mostly to gaps in regulatory and process execution as well as a shortage of skilled labor in warehouses.

The data also reveals that disruptions due to Supply Shortages (semiconductor chips, plastics, cardboard are all examples) were up 638% in the first half of 2021. Resilinc sent out 251 Supply Shortage alerts; this type of disruption ranked 6th in terms of most reported events (behind Leadership Transition). Supply Shortages are driving consolidations, mergers, and business sales as companies look to give a quick cash boost to the core business or optimize the supply chain to best serve the customer base.

In the first half of 2021, almost half (46.5%) of disruptive events occurred in North America, followed by Europe (23.43%), and then Asia (19.45%). In comparison, in the first half of 2020: North America had the most disruptive events; Asia had the second highest; Europe had the third most.

While Human Health disruptions, which include COVID-19 related events, ranked 19th in terms of the number of event alerts in the first half of the year, Resilinc has continued to designate the event as “severe.” It’s the first time in the company’s history ranking an event at that level of impact.

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Inventory Analysis: Affordable, Available, Actionable

For any manufacturer or distributor, the problem with inventory management is easily stated. Simply put, there’s often too much of the stuff that isn’t selling—and far too little of the stuff that is selling.

The result? Disappointed customers, stock-outs and lost sales—combined with shelves groaning with inventory that nobody wants.

Put like that, the mismatch sounds almost comic. But to companies wrestling with just this problem, it’s a quandary that’s very real, and far from laughable.

For in today’s business climate, lost sales and disappointed would-be customers can be very bad news indeed. What’s more, the financial drain of financing unwanted inventory can be crippling. Because while banks are admittedly more willing to lend than they were at the height of the financial crisis, borrowing limits are tight, and terms are expensive.

So what’s to be done?

Inventory analysis: cheaper than ERP, easier than best-of-breed.

Fancy inventory optimization algorithms can help, of course. So can advanced forecasting techniques.
The latter help you to more accurately predict the customer demand that you’ll face; the former help you to better meet those customer demands with available stock.

Inventory analysis: under control, faster and cheaper.

Which is why, of course, so many manufacturers and distributors—especially those with elderly or partially-implemented ERP systems—try the ‘sticking plaster’ approach of spreadsheet-based analysis.

Inventory analysis: self-financing actionable insights.

At Matillion, we know that most of our customers come to us wanting a low-cost, effective Cloud BI solution that can be implemented quickly. And usually, financial reporting and analysis is fairly high on their agendas.