A recurring question from our customers is how can I organize my logistics even more economically? This often means that in areas of self-sufficiency, the companies forgets that supply chain is a large overall process. Small parts within the supply chain matter. Companies can save money if they take a holistic view of their overall logistics process, rather than focusing only on the independently organized parts.

Real savings come from intensively redesigning your supply chain and staying on top of market developments to keep up with trends. It's not about simply buying better. It starts by aligning, internally and externally, with all parties involved together into a whole collaborative system. How do you do that?

1. Setting up a supply chain design

It all starts with checking up on your supply chain routes. Try to go with key stakeholders through every process leading up to product delivery. This may seem very simple or contrary maybe it is a very intense process if you have never done it before, but overviewing your supply chain maps out the bottlenecks. Some companies use expensive software for this while in many cases this does not even provide optimization, but rather even less overview. The setup of your supply chain should meet speed, transparency and accessibility. If one of these qualities is disappointing within your process, highlight this point and provide a solution.

2. Order management

Once all traffic points in the supply chain process have been mapped, they can be linked to order points. The information used by your company behind the scenes such as order numbers, storage and product numbers can be linked to previous supply chain process points. This allows you to think ahead on orders to come but also account for certain circumstances, carrier performance and make a reasonable estimate of the final delivery time.

3. Visualize your supply chain

So far, you've gotten a rough overview of your own supply chain and the outsourced points within that same system. Now it is important to visualize what you have worked out in such a way that you can visibly shuffle different options. At Sea and Shore, we use our own proprietary program to graphically visualize our clients' supply chains. It has proven to be a powerful application to get completeness in all logistic processes and to communicate this clearly to customers and partners. The advantage of a visualization model of your supply chain is that you get to see how other scenarios or players within your system can save expenses.

4. Customer Care

Finally, previous steps can provide great impact for the design of freight transportation but without proper fulfillment, no immediate effect is visible. Today there are many factors involved in delivering goods on time, ports may be closed due to health regulations, there are occasional strikes and the effects of extreme weather has also proven to be an unpredictable factor. With the right logistics forwarding partner, these circumstances can be anticipated earlier, allowing earlier anticipation and mitigation of consequences.

These cost-saving actions can help you get a better grip on your supply chain management today. They have proven to be the most successful steps companies can take, but of course not the only ones. Want to become a supply chain expert? Sign up for our newsletter and stay up-to-date on trends and changes.

Infographic by Sea and Shore Services