When you start failing to meet your customer demands, then it’s time to leave behind your traditional Supply Chain (SC), and start transforming it to cope critical outcomes.
There are many examples of industries that their total market has been shrinking back for years, and seems they will continue like this. We are talking of those companies, which once were considered as moving high-volume of products; employment has fallen in consequence, giving the way to automation. For instance:
- Office supplies manufacturing is affected by the increasing digitisation of the workplace, making fax machines and photo-copiers less necessary.
- Stationery product manufacturing is hurt by the rise of digital communication platforms such as email and electronic invitation websites.
- Traditional book stores and news dealers have struggled to compete with the rise of digital media and e-commerce retailers, losing advertising and subscription revenue day by day, as cable television and web-based news platforms have gained presence.
- Newspapers, magazines, books, directories, mailing lists, or music, plus publishers of art prints, calendars, or greeting cards, have struggled against digital media platforms.
- Advances in sound mixing technology make the production and distribution of music, reducing the need for professional recording studios for many artists.
- Textiles manufacturing is harmfully affected or ending commercial operations by increased competition from foreign cotton importers or cheaper labour.
- Credit intermediation, or bank lending, dropped greatly. The rise of online-mobile banking applications reduces the need for physical bank locations.
- Specialised telecom services like satellite tracking and radar station operations cause that the number of people working in the field, has been nearly cut in half.
- Communication-device makers abroad has forced to discard workers faster than almost any other industry.
- Jobs at ports and harbours involve in cargo, ship handling, and navigation, are slowly being automated, putting down jobs, however, making these processes more efficient, precise, and profitable, as there’s a boom in this global commerce industry.
- Photofinishing is devastated by the rise of digital tech and media included in a cell phone, which are equipped with a built-in digital camera. Photographs can now be taken and shared instantly through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.
- Employment in manufacturing of magnetic media, such as audio tapes and videotapes or floppy disks, is crashing. Now, media can be streamed-on-demand through a number of web-based platforms. Video rental stores are no longer seen.
What to do?
Compare to most perishing industries, telecom workers’ salary is higher than others, representing a good opportunity for your enterprise, as long as you have a clear vision of gaining on knowledge and training on related expertise needs.
Rather than cutting back, decide to lean in. Lean in is creating greater value for the consumer while using smaller amount of resources, getting rid of waste to increase operational efficiency. Make sure you are addressing customers’ needs. Identifying the value stream, meaning the lifespan of a product from the origin of the raw material to the finished product. A value-stream and a proper structure, therefore, needs to be put in place to make sure that the whole production stream flows easily.
Transforming you extended Supply Chain
- Move all the manufacturers/distributors, into a data-driven, collaborative culture.
- Implement a centralised Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process to deal with your business in a more demand-driven way.
- Run weekly COO reviews to check demand styles and progress against the strategy.
- Spread your SC progress out to your distribution network. Set large-scale goals to carry away obstacles.
- Change the meaning of success to how much product distributors sell.
- Establish collaborative responsibility for inventory to reduce the risk of uselessness.
- Supports a collaborative-goal back ground, mediation and decision-making by letting all players in the over-all SC a share-view of transparent data.
- S&OP process optimises inventory in the planning system, identifies inventory targets for each stock item at each location across the network, and carry out forecasting, service-level planning, supplies regional Distribution Centres (DCs), and delivers manufacturing replenishment needs to the production scheduling system.
CONCLUSIONS: A series of aspects triggered the job cut down in the industry. More often than not, they are the result of technological advances, which updated many of these processes making the industry more efficient, and reducing the need for workers in the industry.Transforming your SC to a data-driven culture, working on transparency and visibility, continuously managing data and updating your knowledge is, no doubt, key to your success in these declining markets.
Dave Food
Prophetic Technology
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