Balancing working capital and risk can be difficult at the best of times, but has been especially difficult over the last two years. For obvious reasons. Most organizations find the challenge overwhelming. Historically, working capital levels have been something procurement and operations have regularly clashed over.
Procurement vs. Operations
This can be a common scenario. A centralized corporate team tries to reduce working capital. However, teams at the individual manufacturing sites are focused on not shutting down production lines. This creates a natural tension between these two objectives. The end result usually is that supplies and inventories rise and then the corporate inventory and finance teams naturally respond by reducing working capital.
Other constraints impact excess inventory. For example, many companies are forced to cut inventory due to warehousing space issues, labor shortages or labor costs, and product shelf-life expiration.
Due to data inefficiencies, companies might hold onto product inventory for too long. As a result, they may reach their shelf-life expiration or succumb to built-in product obsolescence. These cuts obviously impact service levels.
Businesses no longer need to reduce risk or reduce costs. Instead, manufacturers can invest in supply chain intelligence, software, and systems to minimize risk and maximize inventory in Maintenance, Repair and Operating (MRO) supplies. Companies want purpose-built systems to implement new techniques and become strategically better placed in the supply chain. An AI-driven platform that sits on top of your existing systems and manages and organizes data across one platform is an emerging method for many Fortune 500 companies. Another method is to outsource those services to a Supply Chain as a Service(SCaaS) operator. Such as Nucleus.
New AI tools can also help accelerate the digital transformation of supply chains. For example, companies can compete more effectively with an AI-driven material management platform that pulls data from various systems and sources, harmonizes that data, and leverages that data into actionable decisions that save millions of dollars in inventory optimization.
Nucleus can optimize customers' freight data through our extensive network of carriers. We create a best-of-breed carrier mix for your freight and monitor their service levels so that customers don't have to. They focus on their business, safe in the knowledge that their supply chain is being managed, monitored and optimized constantly.
Source: Supplychainbrain
Comentários