Efficient supply chain management (SCM) is critical for the success of a manufacturing organisation. What measures is your organisation taking to ensure that your SCM strategy is in alignment with your overall business goals?
We have a central commercial organisation that drives consolidation for logistics and optimises order processing and logistics execution, common procurement management for imports to gain on volume-related benefits, a TOC (Theory of constraints) model for business - GFA (guaranteed for availability)/ COE (complete order execution) initiatives for products and spares.
The location of our manufacturing units and evaluation of new manufacturing sites include logistics perspective. We have a central warehouse and mother hubs. The supplier base/supplier clusters leverage JIT and inbound logistics cost; the company has an IT backbone with ERP distribution model for Supply Chain Management for all verticals. We use large body containers for movement of voluminous products and judicious use of railways for far-flung eastern locations.
Having the right QA processes and implementing them for supply chain partners (vendors) is extremely important for manufacturing companies. What are you doing in this regard?
We have a series of partnership programs with our suppliers using the "cluster approach" to upgrade the quality on the lines of lean thinking and business excellence model. As part of the program, the set of suppliers go through a formal joint improvement learning and executing process supported by supplier improvement teams working jointly with vendors as part of the cluster programme. We have a system where vendor assessment and performance ratings are tracked and communicated and capable vendors acquire the ship-to-line status through self-certification of quality. Vendors performing well on the scores are recognized and given larger share of business. At Godrej & Boyce, we have also initiated vendor
conference and Vendor awards, quality audit/inspection at vendor's end for critical shipments and B2B warranty system for all OE components.
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