According to an article here at The Industry Analyst Reporter, new research from Manufacturing Insights indicates that European companies are focusing on transforming their supply chains to be more agile.

The article states that Western companies are trying to balance efforts in reaching contrasting business objectives of:

• Reducing overall cost and improving productivity (64.85%)
• Increasing quality and customer satisfaction (64.24%)
• Innovating in new or existing products and services (64.24%)

On the other hand, firms from Eastern Europe are operating in the global marketplace and, in order to compete, are placing a particular effort in increasing product quality and customer satisfaction.

The macro trends impacting manufacturers - increasingly volatile demand, extended supply chains and shortening product lifecycles - don’t discriminate by geography. All companies, no matter where you reside, are going to feel the impact of these trends. As global competition increases, companies are increasingly left to compete on the same terms no matter which geography they operate in.

These trends are pushing the need for more responsive demand management and supply chain management capabilities in companies. The days of building a great plan and then executing it well are gone. Competitiveness is now very much a function of your ability to respond to change, and that’s a reality for all geographies.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Best practices, Response Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.