Skip to content
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Demo
  • Login
  • (408) 883-8053
  • [email protected]
Facebook-f Twitter Linkedin
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Demo
  • Login
Menu
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Demo
  • Login
Resilic Logo
  • Solutions
    • EventWatchAI
    • RiskShield
      • Supplier Assessment Library
    • Multi-Tier Mapping
      • Resilinc Supplier Network
    • Autonomous AI Mapping
    • CommodityWatchAI
    • Supply Chain Risk and Resiliency
      • Advisory Services
      • Data and Intelligence Services
  • Industry
    • Aerospace and Defense
    • Automotive & Industrial
    • Healthcare & Life Sciences
    • High-Tech & Semiconductor
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Learning Center
    • Special Reports
    • Events
    • Developer API
  • Company
    • About
    • Partners
    • News
  • Contact
Menu
  • Solutions
    • EventWatchAI
    • RiskShield
      • Supplier Assessment Library
    • Multi-Tier Mapping
      • Resilinc Supplier Network
    • Autonomous AI Mapping
    • CommodityWatchAI
    • Supply Chain Risk and Resiliency
      • Advisory Services
      • Data and Intelligence Services
  • Industry
    • Aerospace and Defense
    • Automotive & Industrial
    • Healthcare & Life Sciences
    • High-Tech & Semiconductor
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Learning Center
    • Special Reports
    • Events
    • Developer API
  • Company
    • About
    • Partners
    • News
  • Contact
Resilic Logo
  • Solutions
    • EventWatchAI
    • RiskShield
      • Supplier Assessment Library
    • Multi-Tier Mapping
      • Resilinc Supplier Network
    • Autonomous AI Mapping
    • CommodityWatchAI
    • Supply Chain Risk and Resiliency
      • Advisory Services
      • Data and Intelligence Services
  • Industry
    • Aerospace and Defense
    • Automotive & Industrial
    • Healthcare & Life Sciences
    • High-Tech & Semiconductor
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Learning Center
    • Special Reports
    • Events
    • Developer API
  • Company
    • About
    • Partners
    • News
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Demo
  • Login
  • Customer Hub
Menu
  • Solutions
    • EventWatchAI
    • RiskShield
      • Supplier Assessment Library
    • Multi-Tier Mapping
      • Resilinc Supplier Network
    • Autonomous AI Mapping
    • CommodityWatchAI
    • Supply Chain Risk and Resiliency
      • Advisory Services
      • Data and Intelligence Services
  • Industry
    • Aerospace and Defense
    • Automotive & Industrial
    • Healthcare & Life Sciences
    • High-Tech & Semiconductor
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Learning Center
    • Special Reports
    • Events
    • Developer API
  • Company
    • About
    • Partners
    • News
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Demo
  • Login
  • Customer Hub
Facebook-f Twitter Linkedin
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Demo
  • Login
Menu
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Demo
  • Login
Resilic Logo
  • Solutions
    • EventWatchAI
    • RiskShield
      • Supplier Assessment Library
    • Multi-Tier Mapping
      • Resilinc Supplier Network
    • Autonomous AI Mapping
    • CommodityWatchAI
    • Supply Chain Risk and Resiliency
      • Advisory Services
      • Data and Intelligence Services
  • Industry
    • Aerospace and Defense
    • Automotive & Industrial
    • Healthcare & Life Sciences
    • High-Tech & Semiconductor
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Learning Center
    • Special Reports
    • Events
    • Developer API
  • Company
    • About
    • Partners
    • News
  • Contact
Menu
  • Solutions
    • EventWatchAI
    • RiskShield
      • Supplier Assessment Library
    • Multi-Tier Mapping
      • Resilinc Supplier Network
    • Autonomous AI Mapping
    • CommodityWatchAI
    • Supply Chain Risk and Resiliency
      • Advisory Services
      • Data and Intelligence Services
  • Industry
    • Aerospace and Defense
    • Automotive & Industrial
    • Healthcare & Life Sciences
    • High-Tech & Semiconductor
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Learning Center
    • Special Reports
    • Events
    • Developer API
  • Company
    • About
    • Partners
    • News
  • Contact
  • Solutions
    • EventWatchAI
    • RiskShield
      • Supplier Assessment Library
    • Multi-Tier Mapping
      • Resilinc Supplier Network
    • Autonomous AI Mapping
    • CommodityWatchAI
    • Supply Chain Risk and Resiliency
      • Advisory Services
      • Data and Intelligence Services
  • Industry
    • Aerospace and Defense
    • Automotive & Industrial
    • Healthcare & Life Sciences
    • High-Tech & Semiconductor
  • Pricing
  • Resources
    • Learning Center
    • Special Reports
    • Events
    • Developer API
  • Company
    • About
    • Partners
    • News
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Demo
  • Login
  • Customer Hub

Home / Blogs / Agile Supply Chain Characteristics & Resiliency

Home / Agile Supply Chain Characteristics & Resiliency

RESILINC BLOGS
dog agile

Agile Supply Chain Characteristics & Resiliency

Nov 05, 2015

Madhura Kulkarni

Uncategorized

Agile supply chain managementAcross industries, companies are struggling to manage inventory in complex global supply networks, trying their best to match smooth uninterrupted supply with increasingly volatile customer demand. Inventory shortages often freeze operations and sometimes cause shutdowns, costing companies their profits and public image. To avoid potential shortages, enterprises often over-stock, effectively stalling functional capital and hurting the returns on equity and assets.

In a volatile supplier market driven by uncertainties and risks, many companies are opting for agile processes and systems for more effective supply chain management.

The key characteristics of an agile supply chain are its flexibility and resiliency. It’s important to differentiate this concept from the ethos of lean supply chains and lean manufacturing, which focuses primarily on trimming “fat” (e.g. inventory, cost) wherever possible.

Agile Advantage:

Agility is defined as the ability to respond rapidly to unexpected changes and events while maintaining consistent customer service levels, service level agreements, liquidity, and cost structures (The Agile Supply Chain, n.d.).

Research by McKinsey & Company indicates 94% of companies implementing agile supply chain practices could deliver, on-time and in-full, while maintaining inventories of no more than 85 days. Companies that failed to follow agile practices maintained 108 or more days of inventory and managed 87% on-time deliveries.

Developing Agile Systems:

Agile systems are dynamic and market sensitive. Responding to real demand efficiently, they equip enterprises to be resilient in the face of demand fluctuations and supplier disruptions by allocating and reallocating inventory where and when needed by reading and responding to real demand efficiently. Thus, the ability to swiftly react to and mitigate supplier continuity risks (e.g. extreme weather, factory fires, labor strikes, and geo-political, market, and financial crisis), is also key to achieving supply chain agility. Here are some important design principles when developing agile processes and systems:

  • Demand Management and Forecasting. Rather than focusing on traditional ‘push’ models for supply chain demand management that are driven by a view of orders, shipments, and inventory, invest in more dynamic agile ‘pull’ models that are consumer centric and driven by real market trends and point-of-sale demand data. This will facilitate precision in forecasting and responsiveness (Johnston, n.d.). The goal is to manage virtual supply chains that are information based rather than inventory based.
  • End-to-end Collaboration. Collaborate with carriers, suppliers, and logistics providers to understand better opportunities to improve business term flexibility, operational savings, and demand, capacity, and business continuity planning. Specifically, leverage customer relationships efficiently to improve demand visibility and supplier relationships to improve disruption visibility and time-to-recovery. Advanced forms of collaboration incorporate process integration using automated systems, e-business solutions, etc.
  • Responsive Systems and Analytics. Develop responsive sales and operating plans to incorporate supply, demand, financial results, inventory, and customer service, based on a robust analytic capability.
  • Resilience and Risk Management. Incorporate capabilities for proactive supply and demand chain risk identification, quantification, and prioritization, as well rapid incident and crises response (e.g. 24/7 supply chain event detection, monitoring, and impact analysis).
  • Design for Agility. Leverage “design for agility” or “design for resiliency” concepts which identify and remediate product design decisions which can negatively impact product availability, such as choosing non-standard components requiring single or sole sources.
  • Process Ownership. While defining the S&OP policies (The Agile Supply Chain, n.d.) ensure that accountable authorities are assigned to drive process changes and on-going change management.

{{cta(’26b8def6-5bb5-4238-88c9-3c97366710d8′)}}

References

Christopher, M. (n.d.). Creating the Agile Supply Chain. Cranfield School of Management.
Jari Collin, D. L. (2006). Plan for supply chain agility at Nokia. Emerald Group Publishing Ltd .
Johnston, D. (n.d.). Building an Agile Supply Chain. Retrieved from http://www.jda.com/: http://www.jda.com/realresultsmagazine/view-article.cfm?did=705
Raoul Dubeauclard, K. K. (2015). How agile is your supply chain? McKinsey Quarterly.
The Agile Supply Chain. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.TCS.com: http://www.tcs.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/White%20Papers/Agile-Supply-Chain-0914-1.pdf
The Network Approach to Inventory Management . (2015). A GT Nexus White Paper.
Resilinc’s Special Report: Critical Commodity Analysis - Shortages and Latest Price Trends

White Paper

Resilinc Special Report: Critical Commodity Analysis - Shortages and Latest Price Trends

Download Now

Recent Posts

Energy Crisis in Asia and Europe: The Supply Chain Impact

What is Operational Resilience? (And Why You Need to Prioritize It)

Can the US Produce Lithium-Ion Batteries Domestically? Li-Bridge Outlines a Plan

7 Steps to Weatherproof Your Supply Chain for Extreme Weather

Turkey Earthquake: Key Industries, Exports, and Sites Impacted

Multi-Tier Mapping vs. AI Mapping: What’s the Difference?

Resilinc’s Senior Director, Shahzaib Khan Discusses Supply Chain Solutions for the UFLPA  

A Look Back at the Automotive Industry in 2022

About Resilinc

We’re the world’s leading supply chain monitoring, mapping, and resiliency solution. Over 100k organizations partner with us to take their SCRM programs from reactive to resilient.
Request Demo

Recent Blogs

Loading...
Natural gas supplies header image for Asia and Europe energy crisis blog.
Mar 28, 2023
5 MIN READ
Resilinc Editorial Team

Energy Crisis in Asia and Europe: The...

February 2023 saw supply chain struggles continue across Asia and Europe due to dwindling energy...
Impact, Supply Chain Disruptions, Supply Chain Resilience
What is Operational Resilience? (And Why You Need to Prioritize It)
Mar 22, 2023
5 MIN READ
Resilinc Editorial Team

What is Operational Resilience? (And ...

Operational Resilience is a strategic (yet often misunderstood) topic. However, by correctly discussing, implementing, and...
Best Practices, Resiliency, Thought Leadership
Header for li-bridge domestic lithium battery blog. A photo of a lithium iron battery factory.
Mar 14, 2023
5 MIN READ
Resilinc Editorial Team

Can the US Produce Lithium-Ion Batter...

Recent government initiatives have strongly endorsed and promoted electric vehicles (EV) over the next few...
Automotive, Rare earth minerals, Reshoring
Read All Blogs

Who's in your supply chain?

Better visibility starts now

Email Now|Call Now|Chat Now

Receive our monthly NewsWatch digest

Subscribe
Resilinc Transparent Logo

Most Trusted, Cognitive Supply Chain Risk Management Platform

Solutions

Blog

Careers

Company

  • About
  • News
  • Events
  • About
  • News
  • Events

Resources

  • White Papers & Reports
  • Case Studies
  • On-Demand Webinars
  • White Papers & Reports
  • Case Studies
  • On-Demand Webinars

Follows Us

Facebook-f Twitter Linkedin

Sales: [email protected]
Support: [email protected]
Partnerships: [email protected]

Resilinc Transparent Logo

Most Trusted, Cognitive Supply Chain Risk Management Platform

Company

  • About
  • News
  • Events
  • About
  • News
  • Events

Resources

  • White Papers & Reports
  • Case Studies
  • On-Demand Webinars
  • White Papers & Reports
  • Case Studies
  • On-Demand Webinars
  • Solutions
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • Solutions
  • Blog
  • Careers

Follows Us

Facebook-f Twitter Linkedin

Sales: [email protected]
Support: [email protected]
Partnerships: [email protected]

© 2023 Resilinc Corporation. All rights reserved.

Data Security

Privacy Policy

Avoid these Top 5 Mistakes Companies Make in Supply Chain Risk

Explore the limitations of traditional supply chain management practices and use our expert tips to make your supply chain resilient

           Learn More