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We must actively partner with our vendors to make the Supply Chain more agile and resilient.
Companies contemplating agility and resilience usually start with demand sensing and move on to agile FG deployment and dynamic production scheduling. While these initiatives do help to some extent in synchronising supplies with demand on an ongoing basis, the stress line shifts to procurement which needs to adjust its delivery schedules to aid dynamic production scheduling.
Agile procurement should be an integral part of design of the agile supply chain. Developing flexibility with our vendors, on both the lead times as well as supply quantity, is a critical capability on the agility journey.
A word of caution is in order. Let’s do it in a true partnership manner. Requesting (or sometimes coercing) for a one time change in delivery schedule has only limited benefits. True partnership is a win-win solution, with advance intimation of urgency and the rationale for such requests. Vendors should stand to benefit by complying with such requests.
Design of such vendor partnerships should aim at joint resolution of the supply chain issues and move the system from firefighting to prevention of such fires.