Best Practices in End-to-End Supply Chain

The latest ASQ CEO blog post asks "what are some best practices for planning and implementing  [E2E] Supply Chain to ensure success?"

Investopedia defines an E2E SCP as, "...a term used to describe products or solutions that cover every stage in a particular process, often without any need for anything to be supplied by a third party. It also embraces a philosophy that eliminates as many middle layers or steps as possible to optimize performance and efficiency in any process."

E2E Supply Chain graphic via LeanCorp.com

Traditional supply chains involve individual organizational silos that often result in inefficient overall performance and constrained supplier relationships. An end-to-end view of the complete supply chain begins with product design, supplier selection and management, then scheduling, production, distribution, and should include after-sale customer service. A holistic E2E Supply Chain integrates all revenue and expense streams. Effective E2E Supply Chains enable disruptive innovations in customer experience by delivering greater visibility of product design & performance and manufacturing capabilities, as well as order management and inventory status.

Building an effective E2E Supply Chain requires the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that bundles top-level business processes such as Concept-to-Launch, Procure-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash functions as well as Hire-to-Retire and Sustain-and-Retain human capital asset management processes to present a holistic view of supply chain operations, while improving organizational strategic planning & deployment, decision-making, workforce planning and overall business growth.

Best Practices in E2E Supply Chains:

• Inventory Management via Lean principles to eliminate waste (including unnecessary inventory) and reduce non value-added activities thereby reducing lead times and order fulfillment errors, resulting in improved customer perceptions of organizational responsiveness. 
• Customer Demand Planning that uses the customers' order history, market analysis, seasonality, competitive landscape, and other factors to understand your customer needs better than they do enabling a more stable and predictable planning process.
• Human Capital asset planning and management that assesses current workforce capability and capacity in response to strategic plans, focusing on the organization's core competencies and strategic advantages.  
• A Lean Management System deploying data-driven root cause analysis where everyone from the CEO down to the intern is a problem solver, coupled with stronger supplier & vendor collaboration can strengthen an organization’s ability to plan effectively and respond to changes with greater agility.

Superior network connectivity between the supplier - manufacturer - customer can be a distinct competitive advantage to building strong business relationships. Working within and across the network to improve quality, service and cost at all touch points is a winning formula to help assure business success.