Tag Archives: efficiency

The Right Solution for Contractor and Supplier Management

Posted on by

The benefits of outsourcing to suppliers and contractors is clear, but the associated risks are largely unseen, and the breakneck pace of change and the pressures of financial reality can cause important, risk-mitigating considerations such as contractor safety to be overlooked – which could be not only an ethical disaster but a business disaster as well.

Contractors and suppliers can provide many essential benefits to businesses such as expertise, efficiency, and cost savings.

In addition, companies working with contractors and suppliers can scale their business up and down depending on market demand.

The benefits of outsourcing to suppliers and contractors is clear, but the associated risks are largely unseen.

To add fuel to the fire, the breakneck pace of change and the pressures of financial reality can cause important, risk-mitigating considerations such as contractor safety to be overlooked – which could be not only an ethical disaster but a business disaster as well.

Contractors working on your site and suppliers providing materials should be considered internal employees.

If contractors are injured on the job, it can seriously damage your organization’s reputation and impede your growth.

To maximize the benefit and minimize the risk of these relationships, companies and their suppliers must commit to a common culture of safety.

This means companies need to stay engaged with their contractors beyond simply hiring them. Companies should:

  1. Regularly collect information from their suppliers that demonstrate a commitment to safety such as incident rates (lagging indicators) and safety programs (leading indicators).
  2. Continuously monitor suppliers’ insurance coverage to protect the company in case something does happen.
  3. Audit worksites on a consistent basis to ensure that safety policies are enforced.
  4. Monitor the condition of equipment that contractors use to carry out their jobs.
  5. Ensure each contracted worker has the proper licenses and certifications to perform the job safely.
  6. Provide site-specific training required for each position.

Read more at The Right Solution for Contractor and Supplier Management

If you like what you read, share it and subscribe us to be the first one to get updates

Asda and Co-op to work together to drive supply chain efficiencies

Posted on by

Asda and the Co-op are pioneering a new way of supply chain collaboration, by enabling mutual suppliers to submit aggregated data on waste, water and energy to both retailers at the same time.

The retailers are working with collaboration platform 2degrees to collect the sustainability data.

Under the agreement, suppliers who serve both retailers can submit the data once, indicating their combined data should be shared with both customers.

It is hoped that by eliminating the need for duplicated information, suppliers will be able to spend more time focussing on the delivery of quality products whilst saving on time, money and resources.

Both retailers have seen suppliers benefit from the platforms delivered by 2degrees. The Co-op, one of the founding partners of multi-client platform Manufacture 2030 has already seen a drinks supplier start addressing their carbon footprint through the platform.

Andy Horrocks of Kingsland Drinks, said: “We are looking closely at a case study shared by another drinks supplier on Manufacture 2030, and using it as a model of how this key environmental process could be done, helping us to sell the idea internally.”

Princes Limited is a key supplier to both Asda and Co-op, and has spoken of the benefits of aligned data.

David McDiarmid, Corporate Relations Director at Princes Ltd, commented: “It’s great that two retailers like Co-op and Asda have embraced this approach. With all our manufacturing locations sharing their data between these customers we have cut down duplicated effort, saving time and making the entire process a lot more efficient.

“I hope other retailers will see the benefits of such a collaborative approach and consider it for their suppliers environmental reporting.”

Read more at Asda and Co-op to work together to drive supply chain efficiencies

What have you learnt from this article? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box and subscribe to get updates.

Related articles

How visibility can drive supply chain performance

Posted on by

How visibility can drive supply chain performance

At its heart, supply chain management requires a balancing of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality. Managing the true cost to serve each and every order is the aspiration to allow better negotiation and value creation across the supply chain. Customer and consumer centricity helps anticipate product and service requirements. But supply chains are becoming more extended and complex with a consequent increase in risk and the need for resilience. There are multiple data sources making it difficult to manage and measure end-to-end processes and metrics. Aligning priorities through integrated planning remains pivotal but there is an explosion of data available that needs to be incorporated and the value extracted to understand how supply-demand issues impact profit and revenue targets.

Organisations are looking to enable better and more consistent decision-making across complex processes with diverse systems and data. Many are leveraging business intelligence (BI) platforms to give them the capability to make decisions across the organisation, including environments where mobility and access to decision-critical information on the go is crucial. Putting the information in the hands of the people on the front line – those managing supply chain processes – is key to enabling decision making at the point of decision. But this requires synchronising an enormous amount of data that comes from many systems and sources in a way that it can be easily consumed by people who need to act on the insights.

Read more at How visibility can drive supply chain performance

Share your opinions with us in the comment box. Subscribe to get updates in your inbox.

Related articles

Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

Posted on by

At its heart, supply chain management requires a balancing of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality. Managing the true cost to serve for each and every order is the aspiration to allow better negotiation and value creation across the supply chain. Customer- and consumer-centricity helps anticipate product and service requirements. Supply chains are becoming more extended and complex with a consequent increase in risk and the need for resilience. There are multiple data sources making it difficult to manage and measure end-to-end processes and metrics. Aligning priorities through integrated planning remains pivotal, but there is an explosion of data available that needs to be incorporated and the value extracted to understand how supply and demand issues impact profit and revenue targets.

New technology provides greater supply chain transparency. Strategic supplier engagement continues to be important as a way of reducing costs and mitigating risk. Effective supply chain management can be either a compelling competitive differentiator or, conversely, a source of risk, cost and poor customer service.

Organizations are looking to enable better and more consistent decision-making across complex processes with diverse systems and data. Many are leveraging business intelligence (BI) platforms to give them the capability to make decisions across the organization, including environments in which mobility and access to decision-critical information on the go is crucial. Putting the information in the hands of the people on the front line—those managing supply chain processes—is key to enabling decision-making at the point of decision. But this requires synchronizing an enormous amount of data that comes from many systems and sources in a way that it can be easily consumed by people who need to act on the insights.

Read more at Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

What do you think is important in Supply Chain Performance Management? Share your opinions with us in the comment box.

Related articles

Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

Posted on by

At its heart, supply chain management requires a balancing of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality. Managing the true cost to serve for each and every order is the aspiration to allow better negotiation and value creation across the supply chain. Customer- and consumer-centricity helps anticipate product and service requirements. Supply chains are becoming more extended and complex with a consequent increase in risk and the need for resilience. There are multiple data sources making it difficult to manage and measure end-to-end processes and metrics. Aligning priorities through integrated planning remains pivotal, but there is an explosion of data available that needs to be incorporated and the value extracted to understand how supply and demand issues impact profit and revenue targets.

New technology provides greater supply chain transparency. Strategic supplier engagement continues to be important as a way of reducing costs and mitigating risk. Effective supply chain management can be either a compelling competitive differentiator or, conversely, a source of risk, cost and poor customer service.

Organizations are looking to enable better and more consistent decision-making across complex processes with diverse systems and data. Many are leveraging business intelligence (BI) platforms to give them the capability to make decisions across the organization, including environments in which mobility and access to decision-critical information on the go is crucial. Putting the information in the hands of the people on the front line—those managing supply chain processes—is key to enabling decision-making at the point of decision. But this requires synchronizing an enormous amount of data that comes from many systems and sources in a way that it can be easily consumed by people who need to act on the insights.

Read more at Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

What do you think about this topic? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box.

Related articles