Supply Chain Cost Solutions? 51 sustainable ways to cut and control them

…because your solutions are kind of important when it comes to your name staying on the payroll.

With each passing day someone else is pushing a price increase upon you.

It costs more to supply your products today than it did yesterday.

The problem is that your organisation pushed through a price increase yesterday.

That was a hard enough battle to fight and win.

Nobody has the stomach for another fight like that so soon.

All eyes in the room turn to you - the Supply Chain.

Everyone’s thinking the same thing.

“You’re the biggest cost centre! You’re the problem. Start cutting your costs!”

And then somebody says it out loud, and all agree.You hear humming to your left. It’s the theme tune to “Mission Impossible” and you look up from your notes, but everyone’s silent.

A quick meeting’s a good meeting.

All the actions are with you, or rather the single action is with you.

But the good news is you have plenty of time to do it

…you’ve got a week

What do you do?

You can look for excuses, or you can look for solutions, but not both.

Solutions are better.

Solutions are kind of important when it comes to your name staying on the payroll.

STEP 1

Go get a coffee and find somewhere quiet to sit.

STEP 2

Ctrl N in Excel – which everyone knows is the starting point of any solution.

STEP 3

While you have been moving through steps one and two, your brain has been busy. A million ways to pull the levers and their impacts have been racing around inside your head. You need to hit your brain’s PAUSE button for a moment.

1. In Cell A1 and type in TODAY and TAB to the right.
2. In Cell B1 type in TOMORROW and TAB to the right again.
3. In Cell C1 type in NEXT WEEK and hit enter.

Now hit your brain’s PLAY button and empty your head into those three columns. It’s going to be your brain dump of opportunities to control (i.e. cut) costs.

It’s scalable. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the CSCO for a global behemoth or run a single machine with a big dream and a few people. Both of you are buying in materials to convert into something send to market.

1. In the TODAY column, start to list everything you can do to address costs in the SHORT term.
2. In the TOMORROW column, start to list everything you can do to address costs in the MEDIUM term.
3. 3. And in the NEXT WEEK column, start to list everything you can do to address costs in the LONG term.
4. Now you'll see the opportunities falling into categories.
   1. Processes
      1. Demand
      2. Supply
      3. Inventory
   2. People
   3. Systems & Technology

Ok, everyone’s supply chain is different. Even so, the brain dump might look something like this free list… [follow link to download your free copy to build on].

There are many solutions that you are already working on. But many are what you can start working on. The need to address rising supply chain costs has put them in the spotlight. That same spotlight is now burning the back of your neck.

With the same certainty as death and taxes, you’ll get another cost increase tomorrow.

What can you start on today to control your supply chain costs tomorrow?

It’s on you to drive the solutions to cancel out tomorrow’s increase.

It’s on you to start clawing back on those mounting supply chain cost increases.

All eyes are on you to act.

What are you going to do first?

Hit the list here and pick your first solution…