7 Strategies for Reducing Supply Chain Costs

One of your primary goals as a business owner or supply chain manager is to run a profitable supply chain. You typically accomplish this by implementing efficient and affordable strategies for reducing supply chain costs.

An affordable supply chain is much more than cheaper materials, cheaper professionals, and cheaper supply chain infrastructure. You want the best solution at the most inexpensive value possible. 

The cost of your supply chain is equivalent to the total cost of ownership. With the supply chain crisis, you may be looking for ways to reduce your supply chain efficiently. 

These seven strategies will aid you in reducing supply chain costs.

Collaboration With Other Businesses

Every business has its primary purpose; this means that the business may not be well-equipped to handle certain aspects of its supply chain. If your organization cannot successfully manage aspects of its supply chain, you may want to explore outsourcing or collaboration as a supply chain manager. 

Collaborating with companies whose primary purpose is offering solutions that allows the business and supply chain focus on its core competencies will significantly help your supply chain. 

Example: An e-commerce company may outsource logistics to a 3PL partner and eliminate waste and considerable costs in its supply chain. 

Contract Negotiation

Negotiating with suppliers and business partners for the best price will help you in cutting down supply chain costs.

As a supply chain manager, getting carried away in search for the best possible price during negotiation is easy. When negotiating, it is important to keep an eye on the goal. That is lower price but the best quality. 

It is also essential to ensure both parties leave the table feeling good. This will help retain that supplier’s optimal services. Again, it helps reduce cost in the long term.  

Automating the Supply Chain Process

If you have not automated your supply chain, you will significantly benefit from doing so as a supply chain manager. If you have, there may be other areas you could also automate. 

Automating the supply chain increases speed and efficiency, reducing mistakes and inadvertently reducing the cost of the supply chain. 

The objective behind automating your supply chain should be to improve efficiency. Not to replace labour. Optimal supply chains are supply chains that effectively combine human labour and machines. 

Focus on The Customer

Your supply chain should have your customer base at its forefront. Supply chains tend to adopt policies, regulations, or operating procedures that they think their product needs but not necessarily what their customers need. 

When focusing on your customers, you may find that a little thing like optimizing the product packaging for the customer goes a long way in cutting costs. 

Optimizing your supply chain for customers is another method of eliminating waste, thereby reducing supply chain costs.

Identify Inefficient Supply Chain Processes

Set up the supply chain for continuous improvement. This allows every stakeholder in the supply chain to analyze its processes and operations to identify improvement areas constantly. 

Even when automated, redundant processes in the supply chain can abound. Sometimes, redundancy is borne from the innovation of the supply chain. Procedures or processes that were relevant in the past may not necessarily be applicable going forward. 

Tracking and measuring the supply chain and its performance is one way of identifying inefficiencies in the supply chain. 

It will take constantly reviewing your supply chain to identify these inefficient processes and optimize the supply chain. 

Use Forecasting When Planning

Forecasting is a primary tool of supply or demand planning. Organizations use forecasting to correctly estimate the investment they channel into products for their customers. 

Forecasting enables a business or a supply chain to estimate the demand from consumers so they produce to match their demand. 

With forecasting, you will significantly reduce waste in your supply chain and optimize revenue for the business.  

Inventory management strategies also help you with planning and forecasting. 

Hire The Right People and Treat Them Well

People are essential to your supply chain. But more importantly, is getting the right professionals into the different facets of your supply chain. 

Surrounding your supply chain with the right people increases its output. And reduces mistakes. Treating your staff well will make them work longer and, over time, will reduce staff turnover and cost.

Optimal Utilization of Assets

Assets are supply chain infrastructures that help facilitate the supply chain. Supply chain assets include warehouses and transportation assets such as trucks or ships. 

Optimization of these assets entails the effective and efficient use of the assets—for instance, proper warehouse arrangement to enable the flow of products in and out of the system. 

Optimizing the utilization of these assets also entails proper maintenance and proper use of the assets.

Final Note

All the cost reduction strategies for supply chains discussed in this article go a long way in helping you turn your supply chain into a profitable one. If properly implemented. 

Implementing the listed cost reduction strategies in your supply chain enables you to solve for affordability and it allows you to establish and simplify the operations within the supply chain.

However, the degree of efficiency and method of implementation might vary in different supply chain industries.

Obi Tabansi

Obinabo Tochukwu Tabansi is a supply chain digital writer & ghostwriter helping professionals and business owners across Africa explore various strategies that work and learn from the success and failures of various supply chains across the globe. He also ghostwrites social content for logistics & supply chain businesses

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