Optimize food supply chain operation

Source: 8 Simple Lessons about Outsourcing to Grow Your Business

First and foremost when we talk about optimizing our food supply operation, I would

suggest that company to outsource our business activities according to the suitability of the

situation and activity. Rather than performed an in-house in every business activities using

our own employees, we may need to consider outsourcing certain aspect of it such as our

material procurement, logistics or even our customer services. In fact, we may outsource

other types of work as well including our manufacturing, our human resources and even

financial such as bookkeeping and payroll. This is because by outsourcing out business

activities, we can lower the costs of certain aspect in the business activities, improve our

company efficiencies in production and also we can speed up our production. In this context,

I certainly agree with it because when we outsource our human resources task or logistics for

example, the third-party provider, they focuses only on that particular task because it is

within their expertise. They are able to do the task better, faster and cheaper that would

benefit our company in certain aspect. We, we can focus our resources more specifically on

our core competencies as we rely on their expertise. Imagine how fast and efficient our
company will be if we outsourcing some of our business activities that are beyond our

expertise.

Therefore, we need to think of a strategic planning for our company supply chain

operation, not only for short term but for a long term survival. How well we manage and

handle our material describe our company well-being in the market. Proper planning, back-up

planning everything need to be prepare so that any issues that we are facing in the future we

can tackle it according to what we had planned. For example, if our regular supplier running

out of material that we need for our production, we already have a back-up supplier so that

we can continue our production as usual without affecting our supply chain operation. Same

goes to our logistics or manufacturing, we knew that if one of that activities facing an issue

and we are unable to handle it, it will affecting our entire supply chain operation. That is why

strategic planning are very important for our company in optimizing our food supply chain

operation.

Enhance transportation and logistics processes

Source: Supply Chain Beyond. Artificial Intelligence in the Logistics Industry

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 We all know that the time takes once the customer done the order placement until the

delivery process is the most important as it involves customer experience which they will

decide whether our company performing well or no. A disfavour opinion from your customer

by long lead times in fulfilling your customer order are affecting your entire business

operation no matter how well we are handling other business activities. Therefore, we need to

enhance our transportation and logistics processes by focusing on order-to delivery lead time,

make it as our highest priority and plan accordingly. Other than that, we might also need to

set some standard operating procedures if we do not have one. If we have it already we might

need to re-evaluate and reconstruct our standard operating procedures so that we can

minimize the inefficiencies in our production unit. The key of successfulness in

transportation and logistics processes is the information flow. Therefore, we should focusing

on improving the information flow throughout the logistics chain and forward so that people

are crystal clear with their roles and responsibilities. What we can do is we can display the

SOPs throughout the facilities and any duplicate shipment and human error can be reduce if

we always apply the double-checking system.

Besides set up or reconstruct our standard operating system, we might also need to

look at our transportation and logistics design whether it is cost and time efficiencies or not.

If not, we need to redesign it for a better performance in this business operation. As we

already know that transportation consume the highest expenses in logistic especially when

there are no proper planning implemented throughout the operation. Therefore we need to

analyse each of the aspect in our transportation process especially which part consume the

highest in expense. In this context, we can analyse which route can be taken for a delivery

and loading which is the shortest and safest route. In addition, choosing a large scale of truck

also a good option so that we can ensure that our transportation carry a full loads. We also

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able to improvise in term of our product packaging which without compromising the product

security, we minimize the weight and the size of our product packaging.

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Manage inventory more efficiently

Source: Asset Infinity

Inventory management are very crucial in every business operation and most of

company that do not practice a good management are not able to meet their customer’s

expectations by supplying available product to them. Moreover we are the agro-based

company, inventory management are really important for us to be concern in order to make

sure that our company always supply enough product to customer, our product are not waste

because of damages or overstocking and many more. Therefore, there are ways to effectively

manage our inventory so that we can increase our profitability which is first thing that we can

do is to prioritize our inventory. We can prioritize by dividing our items that we need to order

more and frequent. By doing this we can always alert on thing according to our priority.

Other than that, we may also need to make sure to keep all the records of our product

information in the inventory such as the barcode data, suppliers, origin and others. We may as

well consider to trace the cost of each item time by time so that we are aware with the change

in cost. As well important as tracing our product information, we also need to analyse our

supplier performance because they may cause problems for our inventory with their poor

performance in term of late delivery or wrong quantity supplied. Make sure that we are

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always in contact with our supplier and determine the problem of the issue and if there are no

solution to it, we can switch our supplier to more reliable one.

Besides that, we also need to audit our inventory regularly. Regardless of how often

we do the audit, we need to make sure that we do a physically count of our inventory as well

to ensure that it matches up with what we have in the inventory. Last but not least, we may as

well need to invest in management technology for the use of our inventory such as a mobile

scanner and point of sale system to ensure that we are on track. This will help us on provide

extra time especially in transferring the data and identify inaccurate inventory count during

the audit.

Enhance production cycle efficiency

Ensure the production cycle to work efficiently are another important things in food

supply chain especially when it comes to customer satisfaction. Customer always demand for

product that can be available all the time. If our products are available only some times

because of a poor production cycle, it may affect our customer to change to another product

instead of ours. Therefore, to make our production cycle work efficiently are we need to

avoid wasting our material no matter what kind of waste it is; in term of raw materials,

energy, labour hour and other things. Ways of reducing it is by focusing more on our design

in the beginning; low in cost and material used but at the same time improve profitability.

Material that can be recycle also can be recycle or re-used, turn the waste into profit. Besides

that, we could also provide a training for our employee to improve working on multiple

processes. With this training they can rely on one another if there are any troubleshoot, they

may substitute or doing a repetitive tasks. They will have a better understanding of their roles

within the process.

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 Same as in other business activities, everything must be well organized because it is

the key to an efficient workspace. We need to make sure that all of our materials, tools, parts

and instruction are at their place accordingly and are not piling up. Every employee must

know where all of the materials are placed. Standardize all the works, starting by making a

procedures that all employees need to follows. This can lead to reducing downtime and

improve the product quality due to no individuality among our employees. Last but not least,

we must strengthen the base of our supply. We have to work with our supplier and make sure

they are consistently providing us with the best materials. We may also want to find

customers feedback from them because they will respond quickly if anything goes wrong

with the product.

Improve the flexibility of the food supply chain

Our company flexibility of the food supply chain can be improve with the availability

of technology throughout our food supply chain. Uses of technology in the last few years

have been seen as a successful ways in improving the flexibility of the supply chain in every

business. Modern technology and software enable company to speed up their operation with

the reduction of interference and error by man work. For example, by integrating the uses of

technology in our warehouse management systems, we will be able to trace our inventory and

provide us with the real-time updates for movement of our goods. Other than that, with the

uses of technology such as mobile-based technology enable our company food supply chain

to operate more flexible. In this context, this mobile-based technology widen the range of our

communication with our supplier, manufacturer and consumer. Any flow of information

about our products, any issues or problem we can trace just at the tip of our fingers. Despite

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of different places, time zones, or even the degree of accessibility, we can still reach our

third-party(ies) at any time. Thus, our supply chain can operate more flexible than before.

Other than the uses of technology in our food supply chain, our company also can

prepare a strategic planning (plan B) if there will be any impromptu situation that is out of

our control such as an outbreak of viruses that will affected business all around the world.

Things that we should prioritize in this strategic planning is we should have a back-up

supplier for our supply. For example, if usually we import our inputs from other countries

because of the quality and slightly cheaper price, when there are a restriction in movement of

import and export, we should have a local supplier that can substitute our current supplier so

that we can still continue our production operation. Besides that, we may also include the

new design of our product for the situation like this. Although there are problem with

requiring the material we need for our production, with the newly back-up design we are able

to produce the same product with the slight change of material that we can still get at the

situation like this.

I truly believe that if we apply the uses of technology and preparing a strategic back-

up plan for our company food supply chain we are able to improve the flexibility of our

supply chain operation. With the flexibility of our operation the continual of our business will

be more secure no matter what impromptu situation we are facing in the future.