ERP: Use technology to extend information through the supply chain…

and keep your promises for on time delivery.

Supply chain management is more complicated than just buying the stuff your operation needs at the lowest price you can find.  It’s having the right material in the right quantity at the right place to make promises on delivery.

Keep your promises to your customers.

If you don’t keep your promises, you don’t get to hold on to your customers for long.  And if you decide to play it safe by having lots of extra stock on hand (given the comforting name of “Safety Stock”) you get to go broke by having all your money tied up in inventory.  You then run the risk of the stock becoming degraded and useless or obsolete, as product designs or service offerings change.  This adds costs, time to replenish and wasted investment of cash and labour.

ERP is the information database for your supply chain.

Right material, right place, right time, right quantity… this is all information that can and should be handled by your enterprise information system.  If that information can be shared in a timely manner throughout the supply chain from your customers to you and from you to your suppliers and sub-contractors, then you can run your supply chain leaner.  This allows you to substitute information for inventory and changes your strategy for servicing your customers.

Provide better information sooner rather than buying more safety stock.

The supply chain moves in two directions; information and money moves upstream and products and/or services move downstream.  The stream contains hazards of navigation.  Some of them are big, pointy and dangerous.  If you could only eliminate the hazards, your supply chain could flow smoothly and thereby reduce the need to keep excessive cash-sucking “Safety Stock.” This will have the effect of reducing inventory and the delivery time of your product and/or service to the customer.

Make no mistake about it – in customer service (and safety stock), time truly is money.

In his presentation, Curtis will share with you his experiences on:

• Why we need to create an extended supply chain – or dare we say, a value chain – to help the  company be more effective at making money
• The steps we need to take to allow us to  realize an extended supply chain
• Learned lessons of some of the available technology to enable those steps
• His thoughts on how that technology might be implemented in your company

Who should attend?

Everyone who has an interest in increasing their customer service levels while simultaneously lowering their costs – which turns out to be just about everyone.  Managers, planners, buyers, customer service, shop floor supervisors, and the old high school buddy you ran into at the bus stop yesterday.

Related material

If this topic interests you, you might like the following conference proceedings: Achieving Supply Chain Visibility by Jonathan Colehower, compliments of APICS Vancouver. Hundreds of great articles such as this one are available on a variety of topics exclusively to APICS members. Follow this link to access and search the APICS publications database. 

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