Supply Chain Audit: identify optimization opportunities

As an expert in sup­ply chain opti­miza­tion, ALOER sup­ports its cus­tomers’ glob­al sup­ply chain chal­lenges and busi­ness success. 

While it’s com­mon to find gaps or under­per­for­mance in orga­ni­za­tions’ sup­ply chains, their audit objec­tives are clear:

• iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in their organization, 
• find pro­duc­tiv­i­ty levers, 
• (re)structuring their dis­tri­b­u­tion network,
• or intro­duce new struc­tur­ing flows into their sup­ply chain.

That’s where our Sup­ply Chain Audit ser­vice comes in. 

We car­ry out an in-depth analy­sis of your flows (phys­i­cal, infor­ma­tion and finan­cial), assess the per­for­mance and matu­ri­ty of your sup­ply chain, and draw up a list of gaps with best prac­tices.

This X‑ray enables us to draw up a list of rec­om­men­da­tions and a cus­tomized action plan, per­fect­ly in line with your com­pa­ny’s strate­gic orientations.

In this way, the audit pro­pos­es to Sup­ply Chain man­agers to meet their needs for rapid improvement: 

• adapt­able, high-per­for­mance methodology
• con­tin­u­ous improve­ment approach
• con­crete, prag­mat­ic results

What­ev­er the indus­try — man­u­fac­tur­ing, logis­tics, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal or oth­er — our sup­ply chain audit ser­vice is designed to meet your spe­cif­ic needs. 

Trust ALOER and its expert con­sul­tants to audit and improve your sup­ply chain. Togeth­er, we’ll improve your per­for­mance and your success. 

Supply Chain audit objectives: efficiency and ROI

Sup­ply Chain Audits address the chal­lenges faced by com­pa­nies in all sec­tors, in search of rapid improve­ments and spe­cif­ic levers. 

For ALOER, the sup­ply chain audit aims to ensure your oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy while opti­miz­ing your process­es. The main objec­tive: to achieve the results set by your com­pa­ny, while min­i­miz­ing unde­sir­able impacts.

Our sup­ply chain audit is an in-depth diagnosis: 

• assess­ment of the cur­rent state of your processes,
• detec­tion of any malfunctions, 
• iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in your system. 

On this basis, we draw up a ROI-based action plan: 

• short-term — 6 months: to “get the ball rolling” and boost team per­for­mance, and achieve the first quick wins.
• medi­um and long term — 6 to 24 months, and beyond: to reor­ga­nize ser­vices, improve per­for­mance across all flows, invest sus­tain­ably to enhance cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and face com­pet­i­tive markets.

Supply Chain Audit benefits

Com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment : we ana­lyze every stage of your sup­ply chain, from sup­pli­er man­age­ment to fin­ished goods dis­tri­b­u­tion, to iden­ti­fy poten­tial risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties for opti­miza­tion. We assess the state of use of your IT tools, includ­ing ERP, APS and WMS. 

Increased trace­abil­i­ty: our audit assess­es the trace­abil­i­ty of your sup­ply chain to meet reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments and grow­ing expec­ta­tions for trans­paren­cy and quality.

Cost reduc­tion : by iden­ti­fy­ing inef­fi­cien­cies and sources of waste, we help you reduce your oper­at­ing costs while main­tain­ing high qual­i­ty standards.

Process opti­miza­tion : our rec­om­men­da­tions aim to opti­mize your logis­tics process­es, improve inven­to­ry man­age­ment and strength­en coor­di­na­tion between all play­ers in your sup­ply chain.

Supply Chain audit methodology

We have devel­oped our own Sup­ply Chain audit method­ol­o­gy. It can be adapt­ed to all sec­tors and types of industry.

Preparation

In this ini­tial phase, we pre­cise­ly define the scope of the analy­sis (ser­vices, infor­ma­tion sys­tems, oper­a­tions, etc.) and the objec­tives to be achieved. For example:

• oper­a­tional aspects: best busi­ness prac­tices in plan­ning, sched­ul­ing and pro­duc­tion monitoring.
• tech­ni­cal data man­age­ment and parameterization.

This step is essen­tial to guar­an­tee the focus and scope of the analy­sis.

Flow analysis

Based on the defined scope, our con­sul­tants car­ry out on-site analy­ses to pro­vide an objec­tive assess­ment of sup­ply chain matu­ri­ty, including :

• inter­views with sup­ply chain managers, 
• eval­u­a­tion of infor­ma­tion sys­tems: ERP, APS, WMS, etc, 
• analy­sis of inter­faces between links in the chain, 
• exam­i­na­tion of phys­i­cal, infor­ma­tion and finan­cial flows. 

We also review the avail­able per­for­mance indicators. 

Addi­tion­al assess­ments and more spe­cif­ic analy­sis are car­ried out where the poten­tial gains are the greatest. 

Diagnosis and feedback 

Draft­ing of the analy­sis and feed­back to the teams in 2 stages. 

First of all, inter­nal­ly, the inter­views and doc­u­ments col­lect­ed are ana­lyzed in order to draw up an assess­ment of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Sug­ges­tions for improve­ments and actions to be tak­en are first pre­sent­ed to the audit client. 

In the sec­ond stage, pro­pos­als for sup­ply chain improve­ments and cor­rec­tive actions are dis­cussed with the audit client in the pres­ence of a deci­sion-mak­ing com­mit­tee. They take dif­fer­ent forms, such as :

• orga­ni­za­tion­al adjust­ments and adapt­ed processes, 
• the estab­lish­ment of steer­ing indicators, 
• actions to strength­en the sup­ply chain and make it more reliable, 
• as well as the pre­sen­ta­tion of quan­ti­fied returns on invest­ment, where possible. 

We also iden­ti­fy drifts and anom­alies that could com­pro­mise the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the sup­ply chain.

The cross-func­tion­al approach adopt­ed by ALOER in its analy­sis enables us to iden­ti­fy syn­er­gies and pri­or­i­ty areas for improve­ment, as well as the most impor­tant levers .

Leverage supply chain audit results

Once a com­plete sup­ply chain audit has been car­ried out, it is essen­tial to deter­mine the appro­pri­ate actions to take in order to cap­i­tal­ize on the findings. 

The aim : to deter­mine the pri­or­i­ties for “kick-start­ing the machine” and achiev­ing a rapid return on investment.

ALOER offers its exper­tise to sup­port the imple­men­ta­tion of audit rec­om­men­da­tions, pro­mote effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and explore dig­i­tal solutions. 

ALO­ER’s dig­i­tal­iza­tion exper­tise ensures that the right tools are iden­ti­fied and inte­grat­ed to improve process­es and unlock increased val­ue with­in the sup­ply chain.

Final­ly, with a clear action plan and imple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy, orga­ni­za­tions can autonomous­ly embark on a jour­ney towards oper­a­tional excel­lence. By com­mu­ni­cat­ing audit results inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly, teams can adopt the nec­es­sary changes and align their efforts. 

Implementing recommendations

Fol­low­ing the diag­no­sis and pre­sen­ta­tion of the results, ALOER sup­ports you in imple­ment­ing the improve­ments iden­ti­fied, in line with the pri­or­i­ties defined, in order to achieve the desired lev­el of excellence. 

The def­i­n­i­tion of a detailed action plan and the set­ting up of work­ing groups enable improve­ment solu­tions to be put into practice. 

What’s more, putting the action plan into prac­tice encour­ages buy-in from all the stake­hold­ers involved in the opti­miza­tion project.

Communicate

Audit results can be com­mu­ni­cat­ed both inter­nal­ly and externally. 

It is essen­tial to share the results with the teams in the field to facil­i­tate change man­age­ment. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion will raise aware­ness of the issues at stake and the actions under­tak­en to improve the sup­ply chain.

Digitalize

Improv­ing process­es may require the inte­gra­tion of new tools, par­tic­u­lar­ly dig­i­tal ones. 

ALOER can help you car­ry out an in-depth audit of your infor­ma­tion sys­tems. The search for the right tools and their eval­u­a­tion enable us to meet the spe­cif­ic needs of your sec­tor. Dig­i­ti­za­tion can help opti­mize your process­es and increase your oper­a­tional efficiency.

Tracking performance indicators

To keep track of your sup­ply chain’s per­for­mance, there are sev­er­al key indi­ca­tors to monitor:

1. Ser­vice rate: mea­sure the ser­vice rate from your sup­pli­ers to your cus­tomers to assess the sat­is­fac­tion and reli­a­bil­i­ty of your sup­ply chain.
2. Fore­casts : assess the reli­a­bil­i­ty of your fore­casts by com­par­ing fore­cast SKUs with actu­al results to antic­i­pate devi­a­tions and opti­mize your stock levels.
3. Stock : mon­i­tor stock lev­els, stock rota­tion and stock cov­er­age to ensure effi­cient resource man­age­ment. And don’t for­get to eval­u­ate costs.
4. Pro­duc­tion indi­ca­tors: use indi­ca­tors such as prod­uct qual­i­ty rate (right first time), yield, avail­abil­i­ty rate (OEE) and pro­duc­tion order com­ple­tion rate to mon­i­tor and con­trol your pro­duc­tion processes.
5. Track­ing deliv­er­ies : eval­u­ate the rate of under-deliv­er­ies, error rates, on-time deliv­ery, ship­ment vol­umes and deliv­ery qual­i­ty to ensure reli­able, high-qual­i­ty service.

It is impor­tant to note that these pro­duc­tion indi­ca­tors are inter­de­pen­dent, and that there are stan­dards, such as NF (E 60–182), which stan­dard­ize cal­cu­la­tions for bet­ter com­par­i­son and analysis.

The indi­ca­tors to be tracked will vary accord­ing to the projects ini­ti­at­ed at the end of the audit.