By: Doug Baker, Vice President, Industry Relations, FMI
Supply chains have been under the strain of unprecedented demand and precarious logistics capacity challenges. With the high degree of supply chain volatility and uncertainty, what can be done to improve the situation?
We’ve seen that our supply chain is resilient to a point, but we also have sustained inflationary and workforce pressures at play; therefore, there is a real need and opportunity for industry collaboration across the entire value chain to restore equilibrium, identify supply chain root causes, share best practices, and embed greater resilience in the system.
FMI has taken this opportunity to understand how other leading companies are addressing rising transportation, logistics and warehousing costs by facilitating dialogue between retailers and manufacturers to jointly develop initiatives and an industry roadmap to solve for these challenges. We have identified seven priority focus areas to improve supply chain performance:
- Control tower KPI management.
- Labor management (plants & warehouses).
- Managing carriers and collaborative transportation.
- Product availability.
- Fleet and driver management.
- Distribution center networks.
- Sourcing resiliency.
These key findings set the stage for the 2022 FMI Supply Chain Forum, October 18-20, 2022, in Arlington, VA, where we will focus on addressing the systemic end-to-end capacity, labor and cost challenges impacting efficiency, resiliency and business continuity designed to better serve consumers.
The event will feature open, honest and timely conversations with industry partners to address immediate needs to restore supply chain equilibrium and product flow, unlocking efficiencies and build long-term capacity and resilience.
The event welcomes senior and mid-level executives in supply chain, logistics, merchandising, procurement, retail operations, transportation warehousing, sales, and customer supply chain. This is a critical time for our industry and for meaningful supply chain improvements. A time for business leaders to make rapid decisions and take immediate actions to sustain business operations.
We hope to see you this Fall.
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