OEM
New challenges exist as Automotive OEMs shift inventory cost to transportation cost given lean manufacturing and distribution trends. While reducing inventories at the plants, they rely on product arriving just in time to meet tight deadlines and ensure manufacturing line schedules are not disrupted. They are faced with the challenge of streamlining their supply chain to ensure parts availability at service centres and dealerships to meet customer service while reducing inventory levels. These companies need to evaluate their logistics networks (both inbound and outbound) to ensure that product will be delivered to meet the business goals. Companies looking to achieve these goals need a set of supply chain tools that look comparatively at plant optimisation and transportation optimisation.
Suppliers
Automotive suppliers continually strive to deliver reliable parts on-time at the lowest possible cost 100% of the time. As part of OEMs cost reductions, there has been an increased requirement for material replenishment, which includes supplier managed inventory. OEMs are also pushing the suppliers’ sphere of responsibility toward components and systems delivery instead of traditional piece-part. All of this forces the supplier to no longer just look at lean manufacturing and inventory efficiencies for cost saving, but also to improve supply chain performance. To achieve supply chain efficiency, Automotive Suppliers will need a set of supply chains tools allowing them to increase response time and improve supply chain flexibility.
Challenges
- Greater number of trading partners requires improved collaboration.
- Fewer amounts of safety stock require coordinated delivery accuracy.
- Added complexity to the supply chain structure to support lean manufacturing objectives.
- Synchronisation of transportation and production schedules.
- Increased level of requirements to meet service parts fulfilment.
|
