When you are dealing with consumer products, when a product is sold to end customers, there is a large and complex supply chain that works in the middle to get your products from A to B.
Customer products are sold online, instore or both. The range of goods that people can purchase is so broad now that there can be some difficulties in making the supply chain work. However, if you are in the middle of creating a physical product, here are some useful tips for your supply chain optimization.
Not Meeting Demands
You know that when you buy something online, you want it delivered in the fastest amount of time possible. You want to click and collect to be within a day, and delivery the next working day or 3 days or less. Or if a store has ordered in bulk – you need to have the product to them in good time. But if you aren’t using a service that is equipped to make that happen, then you’re going to find you aren’t meeting any expectations. Streamlining is essential. So what do you do?
You need to take a look at who is buying what and where. You might have wellings selling particularly well in X location, but you have it in a warehouse in D location – making it twice as long. To redistribute the stock to make sense. Look at the routing used. Although when you work with experienced companies like CTI Logistics Interstate, the route will be ideal, it is worth understanding how they get from A to B.
Think the last mile. You need to have a range of last-mile couriers and distributors. They should be fast and effective, with high recommendations.
Not Enough Inventory
This is almost a dream and a nightmare at the same time. Running out of stock means that you have sold everything that you had. But that also means that once they see that ‘sold out’ they will go looking elsewhere for the same thing. How can you solve this? Well, this takes some planning in advance because once it happens, it’s over. So in advance, you need to have super tight control on stock – and be aware of the levels at all times.
It helps, too, if you have precision scale models. In the past, customers were forced to purchase multiple scales if they had to weigh heavy objects, and yet still needed the ability to weight small items with precision measurements. Now, though, ultra precision scales offer customers the best of both worlds.
Also, a forecasting AI model is going to be able to help you work out when you are going to sell out, and help you know when you need to order more stock. Steady sales help with this. A central supply chain platform of any kind will let everyone know what is going on – from order management, suppliers, manufacturers and distribution.
Money Tied Up In Old Stock
There will be occasions that you have an excess of stock that isn’t selling. It might be out of season, or maybe it is near its expiry date. Either way, it has to go because there is revenue in it. The storage alone will cost daily. So what should you do? In the early days, you should have a clear overview of what isn’t moving as well as you expected and work on discounting and promoting the products. If that doesn’t work, then you are going to have to set up the discount purchase of your goods to a discount retailer.
There are many other issues that can arise in the supply chain, but those are just three common issues.
