The supply chain is centered around the core of enterprise management, through the control of business flow, information flow, logistics and capital flow, starting from purchasing raw materials, making intermediate products and final products, and finally delivering products to consumers through the sales network to build a supplier, manufacturer, distributor, retailer and end-user. The whole functional network structure is the collection of product production and product circulation.
For enterprises, the adoption of supply chain management is to achieve three ultimate goals through the establishment of strategic cooperation between suppliers and manufacturers: first, to enhance customer satisfaction (improve the reliability and flexibility of delivery), and second, to reduce company costs (reduce inventory, reduce production and distribution costs). Thirdly, the overall "process quality" of the enterprise is optimized (error cost removal, abnormal events elimination). However, in order to seize market share, enterprises mostly adopt multi-brand + multi-product + multi-channel mode, which brings pressure to the supply chain.
China's agricultural products (preparations) market is depressed. Since 2016, the market value of products has declined sharply. Although it has risen in 2017 and 2018, it is still lower than the market value of 2013-2015. Sales of products have declined from 2013 to 2018, while the processing area of products has declined rapidly from 2017 to 2018. A CEO in Silicon Valley said that in a downturn, only low-cost people can survive.
The demand of low cost leads to the supply chain being put on the table for the first time. The reason is that the proportion of people in the supply chain is the largest in the enterprise. The second reason is that 70% of the cost of the enterprise comes from the supplier. The supply chain invests the most in addition to R&D. The third reason is that most of the assets of the enterprise come from R&D. Supply chain.
Definition of multi-brand, multi-product and multi-channel
Multi-brand is to provide differentiated products and services according to the value demands of different market segments, and to extend and develop multiple sub-brands or well-known brands by using parent brands or existing well-known brands, so as to form a three-dimensional related brand system.
Multi-product is to provide the same products and services according to the value demand of the same market segmentation, and simply give different product trademarks or images (one product and multi-brand) to form a relatively simple product series.
Multi-channel means to subdivide the same or different markets, cooperate with multiple channels, and provide convenience for users to purchase, so as to improve channel and market share.
At present, enterprises mostly adopt multi-brand + multi-product + multi-channel mode to seize market share, which also brings challenges to the supply chain. Foreign enterprises have done well in multi-brand mode. In order to seize market share, domestic enterprises have made the best use of multi-product mode. Now they invest in R&D to make differences, and then plan for multi-brand mode.
For marketing, variety means small batch; for supply chain, it means lower prediction accuracy, more passenger volume, more SKU, shorter backup time, lower minimum starting volume, higher logistics cost, shorter procurement cycle, more complex supplier management, etc. In terms of operation, it means heavy assets operation, high capital occupancy rate and many suppliers.
Specifically speaking, the challenges to the supply chain are as follows: the marketing management (market, sales, customer service, products, projects) to customers faces complex demand problems, that is, product line length, product SKUs, unique demand, high product complexity; and the supply management to suppliers faces the problem of heavy asset operation. That is, high occupancy rate of funds, many suppliers, complex supplier management, high cost, low efficiency and high quality risk; for supply chain coordination and planning, it is faced with complex planning problems, such as complex planning data, difficult planning judgment, more urgent needs, high inventory, low inventory turnover rate, complex disposal of expired products.
How to solve the problem and meet the challenge?
It is unrealistic to rely solely on "supply chain management" to solve the problem, which requires the iron triangle of enterprise operation in order to reduce costs and improve efficiency, all for the purpose of serving enterprise profit margin.
For product management, it is necessary to strengthen product management and systematic design, reduce complexity-driven costs and increase product differentiation (which is conducive to improving product competitiveness).
For supply management, in order to achieve low cost and high efficiency, it is necessary to improve supplier management, share supply chain resources and operate light assets. At the same time, it is also necessary to strengthen cooperation with marketing team. In order to have a good price for products, marketing management needs to improve the judgment and control in supply chain planning with supply management. Make stock.
As far as the function of supply chain management is concerned, "supply management" should rise to the strategic level, "supply chain" should participate in "product management" and "marketing management", and "supply chain" should have analytical ability to support strategy formulation and operation management.
Prospects for the future
For supply chain, can we think about the whole industry chain? Enterprises need to light load, build a shared supply chain, improve the utilization of the whole industry supply chain, reduce costs, which may be the trend of future change. In the future, multi-channel will not be limited to flight defense, seeds, e-commerce and so on. Many enterprises serving agriculture around the world, such as big data, food safety, food procurement, etc., may become part of our future channel?
Internet of Things, Intelligent Manufacturing, C2M and so on have given us infinite reverie. These new concepts have been discussed and applied in other industries. I believe that they will be realized step by step in the agricultural field. With the development of artificial intelligence and the arrival of 5G era, the era of big data will make intelligent supply chain become a reality, mining new knowledge and intelligent knowledge. Knowledge management and more real-time and effective data can help enterprises improve the accuracy of decision-making. Supply chains play a strategic role in these areas!