If you want to make significant improvements to your supply chain strategy, you examine it from the top down. Although this task seems tedious and time consuming, it’s going to reveal areas of improvement that will most likely improve profits. Here are the five tips:

Tip #1 - Connect Your Business Plans and Supply Chain Strategies

If you can do this initially, it means you’ve got enough overlap to make sense of how your supply chain actually affects your business. If you struggle to see any correlation between supply chain success and business success, you will need to do some deeper work.

Remember, a supply chain and a supply chain strategy are big concepts that overlay the entire process. Logistic strategies within your supply chain are where you or your colleagues will get into the nitty-gritty of things. This is where most improvements turn up increases in profits. Nonetheless, you may be able find ways to realign your supply chain management metrics to better serve the company goals, which, in turn, produce a better profit.

An effective supply chain management strategy enacts systems that better address common hurdles like the following:

• Strategic challenges
• Economic pressures
• Government regulations
• Operational obstacles

Tip #2 - Analyze Current Supply Chain System and Strategies

Once you have a general overview of your current system, the first step is to determine where there are problems, if any, with your current strategies. As mentioned in the last tip, this is where you get into the trenches in relation to logistics and individual participants like manufacturers, suppliers, and more. In most cases, it’s tough to get enough distance between you and your system to identify the problems. It’s usually best to hire a third party company with no bias to analyze your system. Here’s what you should expect from these professionals:

• In-depth System Discovery Process
• System Analysis Feedback
• Solution Recommendations

Tip #3 - Involve Colleagues and Third Party Participants

Typically, supply chain deterioration is due to a lack of communication, which usually stems from a lack of transparency. When you involve various people along the supply chain in this analysis process, you will surely find the problem areas quicker and be given multiple solutions from various sources. Here are two goals to strive for when developing a successful supply chain strategy:

Hire/develop a group of supply chain management professionals that will work together to achieve the business goals through the supply chain.

Stress the importance of and the execution of transparent communication with all parties involved in the supply chain.

Tip #4 - Choose A Solution

Preferably, you want to choose the optimal solution to your supply chain problems. You’ve analyzed, collected data, considered opinions, and developed a team to successfully operate the supply chain. Now it’s time to tie it all together and put it in motion. You want to choose a strategy that resolves your current problems while offering a way to satisfy your customers at a profit.