WMS Consultants, SCM Software, and Lean Supply Chain Management

Lean Supply Chain Management main issue is about how to remove movement of products as well as movement of information that do not add values as they are waste (read my previous post). Regarding with this issue, to becoming lean in Supply Chain Management (SCM) is, in principle, how far our ability is to answer important questions, such as:

- How can we reduce our transportation costs?
- How can we better integrate our supply chain?
- How can we improve our labor productivity?
- Do we have the right supply chain systems in place?
- Etc.

When we able to answer these important questions, then we become lean.

WMS Consultant and SCM Software’s Role

When we find our self facing such important questions as stated above, what’ll we do then? Should we become an SCM expert? I don’t think so. It’s too long, and too, costly. We better make a consultation with a consulting and system integration firm we easily find, choose in this internet era. Find transportation consultants, warehousing consultants, WMS Consultants, etc, on the net. Choose the most feasible, suitable one that suit with our business.

And, since information is the crucial part of a supply chain management system, we need to be careful in choosing appropriate software to be implemented. Asking for recommendations from a reputable, experienced SCM consultant focuses on business process improvement and all the steps leading to the procurement of new software is an alternative to be considered.

So, use SCM consultant as well as appropriate software to make our SCM lean.

Lean SCM Benefits

The concept of Lean Supply Chain Management is, in principle, the same with Lean Manufacturing concept. The focus of Lean Supply Chain Management is how to reduce waste in our supply chain. Activities regarding with movement of products as well as movement of information that do not add values are waste.

Just like the types of waste in lean manufacturing concept, there are seven types of waste too in supply chain management. These are Over Supply, Transportation, Inventory, Waiting, Movement, Defective Service or Product, and Over Processing.

The most crucial thing to becoming lean in supply chain management is that we must be able to identify waste. When we able to identify waste, we able to reduce and remove it, and become lean.

The purpose of Lean Supply Chain Management is to meet the 5-Right’s inventory that is the RIGHT product, in the Right quantity, in the RIGHT condition, at the RIGHT place, and at the RIGHT time.

The benefit of being lean supply chain management (Lean SCM) is that our company will be more efficient, have greater flexibility, gain higher productivity, improve rapidity of product development cycle, etc. In the long run, lean SCM will improve our competitiveness and our performance as well.