Supply Chain Readiness Through Four Lenses

As businesses address the shortcomings of 2021 going into 2022, it’s equally important to understand how to continually manage risks properly and leverage past experiences and insights to make informed decisions not just for now, but to help in the “new normal.” Companies need to shore up supplier quality and equip their workforce with the right digital technologies. The key aspects of supplier risk management, performance visibility, and collaboration are a must to take medical device manufacturers from reactive to proactive and predictive. That means smart organizations are not letting today’s crisis go to waste but are seizing the insights gained and applying it to fix current issues or prepare for the next challenge.

To drive a collaborative, automated, data-driven process for a supply chain and rebuild it, CEOs and supply chain leaders must reexamine their supply chain data through four broad lenses—location, supplier quality and resilience, people, and new ideas and processes—and keep a close eye on key supplier metrics.

Lens 1: Location
While a supplier may be ready, it is essential to consider location: city, state/province, country, and perhaps even an area within a city. It is essential to track this to keep in mind other factors driving your supply chain requirements. It could be a new company philosophy around buying local or even a need to identify suppliers in different geographies in case there is a concentration of critical supply processes in a single location.

Lens 2: Quality and Resilience
The second lens positions resilience as an essential parameter. It is crucial to look at suppliers—both old and new—in terms of quality and their ability to meet a firm’s quality excellence goals, manufacturing and service capacity, and, most importantly, financial stability.

Lens 3: People
An often-overlooked aspect in supplier qualification is the human factor. It is imperative to help suppliers think about their people in terms of safety and wellness. You will also have to focus on training and upskilling your own workforce and get them ready for the new normal where more automation may be applied.

Lens 4: New Ideas and Processes
The most resilient companies are reinventing and innovating for customers. They are launching new product lines, changing business models, and altering the way they work. More employees are remote, and your supplier readiness process must keep in mind all these emerging thoughts and ideas. It is critical to build a new kind of supply chain, one that is agile, flexible, and, at the same time, robust.

Companies will need to enlist technology as a driver—not just the enabler. Being digital used to be an ambition. Now it’s imperative for survival.

We will be pleased to share the results of our upcoming Supplier Quality Maturity Benchmark Report with you. This report offers analysis from our annual survey covering a wide range of industries, sizes, and geographies. Sign up now to get the report directly delivered to your inbox as soon as it comes out: https://www.compliancequest.com/whitepaper/2nd-supplier-quality-benchmark-report/

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Know more about CQ’s Supplier Management Solutions: https://www.compliancequest.com/supplier-management-solutions/

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Source Disclaimer – The majority of this blog is an excerpt taken from the article, “Supply Chain Readiness for 2022: Re-Assessing and Rebuilding your Suppliers”.