Supply Chain & Manufacturing: A Prescription For What AILS Our Industry

A PRESCRIPTION FOR WHAT AILS OUR INDUSTRY

- Pradeep Kumar Sharma

There's a lot of talk about how to "fix" manufacturing & Supply Chain issues. What's missing from these conversations is a focus on the costs associated with years of distrust between supply chain partners.

Changing how partners work together, and tearing down the walls of distrust, is essential to accelerating innovation, driving down costs and returning manufacturing to the economic engine it should be.

If you believe that time is money, then every time a part waits, is reworked or is held, then money is wasted.

When We look at our operation, We see wasted money everywhere: from incoming material that's idle and rework on 0.2% of rejects to finished goods that are held and excess packaging on parts shipped.

This money is wasted because we don't trust our material suppliers, our employees or our customers. In most cases, a single instance of supply chain failure leads to an added expense to all future products.

Across our extended supply chain, We can see the same issues -- amplified by a hundred or more suppliers. Each manufacturer adding inventory to smooth production; adding process steps from a long-forgotten corrective action; shuffling pallets because no one knows where exactly to place them; holding finished goods; over-packaging shipments, etc.

How do you build trust into the manufacturing relationship? It's not easy. Trust cannot be measured; metrics don't help in determining how trustworthy a partner or customer actually is today -- or more importantly will be when trouble starts.

All too often, we buy promises, and when disappointed, our disillusion turns into punitive actions that exacerbate the issues we're trying to resolve.