German procurement organisation: Supply Chain Management is facing significant change

Supply Chain Management is facing a change. "Production must be modular in structure, that is, at best, consist of individual manufacturing islands that are intelligently interlinked and can be rebuilt at any time," says Christian Shevchenko, Head of Supply Chain and Procurement Strategy at Nokia, in the May issue of the BME  (Association for Supply Chain Management, Procurement and Logistics) magazine BIP-Best in Procurement.

Ideally, supply chains can start where the customers are with their wishes and ideas. A professional end customer focus requires accurate knowledge of current and potential new customers, as well as the ability to quickly build and rebuild supply chains as needed. Such adaptive supply chains provide several advantages such as customer satisfaction, efficiency gains and cost reductions. Supply chains thus become a core competence of the company and thus a competitive advantage in the market. Ultimately, digital networking provides companies with unprecedented transparency.

Networking does not end in the linear supply chain. Whether machines, devices, people or companies: information can be shared across existing borders in real time. And indications about material bottlenecks are detected early. Even if your own industry is not affected yet.

A pioneer in the development of innovative supply chains is the consumer goods industry. Henkel automatically links forklift trucks, drones, the production planning system and the reporting system. In addition, a new Industry 4.0 unit was created in which new topics are developed. In addition, four years ago, global supply chain and purchasing activities were consolidated in Amsterdam. Many topics are discussed today in a cross-team task force. Ideally, supply chain management and purchasing have common end-to-end goals.

Source: Association for Supply Chain Management, Procurement and Logistics, Photo: Fotolia