SCM improvement

Improving a process as complex as the supply chain can be daunting, as companies are challenged with finding ways to meet ever-rising customer expectations at a manageable cost. To do so, businesses must identify which parts of their supply chain process are not competitive, understand which customer needs are not being met, establish improvement goals, and rapidly implement necessary improvements. Industry has long lacked a standard way to measure supply chain performance. Because of this, manufacturers and service providers were unable to use a common assessment tool — benchmarking — in the effort to improve their performance. Moreover, the lack of a common means to describe supply chain processes rendered software selection difficult and usually expensive. Instead of finding the right tools for improving specific competitive gaps, businesses often made huge investments in software that failed to address their particular problem. All too often, available software products forced companies (often unwittingly) to revamp their supply chain processes to suit some default criteria.