Tag Archives: profit

Six Ways To Optimize Your Supply Chain To Generate Profit

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Companies use multiple tactics to generate economic profit, including introducing new products, launching marketing campaigns or undertaking acquisitions. Supply chains offer an effective, though less understood, path to creating value through growth, driving down working capital, improving cash flow and lowering cost.

Surprisingly few companies understand the importance of the supply chain, and few have a formal strategy in place for managing global supply chain risk in the years ahead. This is especially dangerous given the volatility and uncertainty in trade relations between the U.S. and China, as well as other scenarios around the world. Besides geopolitical uncertainty, having the right talent, a holistic perspective and appropriate technology may all figure into the supply chain risk factor.

Use the following best practices to optimize your supply chain and minimize risk.

Redefine The Supply Chain

Best practices begin with redefining supply chain excellence and broadening its scope.

Create A Cross-Functional Team

Best practices for driving shareholder value through supply chain optimization can be easily implemented in any company for concrete results.

Focus On The Right Metrics

Following increased visibility and cross-functional team-making, focusing on the right metrics is the logical next step.

Connect With The C-Suite

Another essential best practice in supply chain optimization is building relationships throughout the entire company and starting conversations with the CFO and other key executives.

Manage Risks

Long-standing supply relationships have value, but disruption of those relationships can be devastating.

Total Value Optimization

The Total Value Optimization (TVO) framework promotes greater collaboration, integration and transparency.

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Gravity Supply Chain Solutions: Mitigating the risks of trade wars and tariffs

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As trade wars heat up, businesses need to protect their profit margins from increased tariffs. Gravity Supply Chain Solutions CEO, Graham Parker, explains how this can get achieved by digitising the supply chain.

Optimism over an end to the trade war between the U.S. and China seems to have grown further following an extension to the original 90-day trade deal truce, which was due to expire at the beginning of March. However, the U.S. government alleges that the CFO of the Chinese telecoms giant, Huawei, has broken U.S. trade sanctions, and accuses the company of acting as a backdoor for the Chinese government to access U.S. trade secrets, subsequently passing a law that bans federal agencies from buying their products. Huawei, in return, now intends to sue the U.S. government.

In the wake of these allegations, growing hostilities between the two nations could result in trade wars intensifying yet again. For businesses, this would likely mean more rising tariffs. The immediate impact of the tariffs is that they make it more expensive for American companies, manufacturers, retailers, and suppliers, to import products or raw materials from China. American firms will also find it costlier to export goods into China.

China is the largest trade partner of the U.S. according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which estimated that bilateral trade between China and America, reached US$636 billion in 2017, and given this fact, it is highly likely that the reciprocal tariffs will increase the costs of a large proportion of U.S. based companies.

Many noteworthy U.S. corporations have already attested to this fact. For example, General Electric stated that new tariffs on its imports from China could raise its costs by US$300 million to $400 million. Caterpillar claimed U.S. tariffs on imports from China would increase its material costs by around US$100 million to $200 million in the second half of the year.

Read more at Gravity Supply Chain Solutions: Mitigating the risks of trade wars and tariffs

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