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Author: Monique Rupert, Vice President, Professional Services, Kinaxis

I read a good article at Supply Chain Management Review entitled “Mastering the slippery slope of technology.”  I’ve posted a comment at the site and have provided it here as well.

## My Comment ##

I work for a supply chain management solution provider  that helps in connecting manufacturers with their suppliers and this article is spot on.  The manufacturers who are most successful in this endeavour are companies where they have developed a partnership with their suppliers and they already share information.  These manufacturers have a relationship built on trust and not the supplier/vendor relationship where the supplier constantly feels “squeezed” by the manufacturer they supply.  Unfortunately, too many manufacturers do not have a true partnership with their suppliers.  In fact, some suppliers say they are unwilling to share information because they feel it will be “used against” them when it comes to renegotiating contracts.  This is a lose-lose for both the manufacturer and the supplier.

Companies need to clearly outline what benefits the supplier and the company will enjoy if they can cooperate and share critical information.  It is also important for the company to listen to their suppliers and have open, frequent and regular communication about goals, concerns, challenges, timelines, etc.  As mentioned in the article, if both companies can work well together the competitive benefits will be huge and both companies can share in the success.

Once a communication line is open and the project goals discussed and agreed upon, then the task of enabling the technology to connect the company and the supplier’s information is made much less difficult.  Enabling this technology is so important because many companies outsource most, if not all, of their supply chain and therefore, if they have full supply chain visibility into information at all points in their supply chain then they can better serve their customers, analyze what-if scenarios and make on the spot decisions, can respond quickly to changes in demand or supply and generally run their business more efficiently.

Tags: Supply chain

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Products. 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.