STUDENTS' CORNER - 182

Supply chain personnel remain focused on achieving smooth flow of supply chain; it means a lot to them and it expects a lot from them

Success of the supply chain depends on the effectiveness of all the links in the supply chain.  There is a saying in English: The strength of a chain depends on its weakest link. This is true of the supply chain concern also. Suppose you have, say, four components in your business as a whole; inventory dept; finance dept; marketing dept and warehouse dept. If all the departments function efficiently, the supply chain will lead the business to the spot where the business gets what it expects in terms of ‘margin’, to use a simple word. If any one of the four fails to function efficiently, the business efforts get negatively impacted to that extant. To tide over such lapses, big logistics companies take care to appoint supply chain management professionals at all critical positions.

Since the flow of materials and other pertinent things like say relevant information related to business, marketing, and other coordinating tasks must be consistent to the goals of the enterprise, an expert supply chain management person is given the responsibility of leading the business .

Supply chain management experts meticulously choose persons to appoint in all critical positions. Let us rather look into the qualities that these experts are supposed to possess and that they expect from their recruits.

Understanding the customers and their needs as well as their expectations is primary responsibility of the company’s marketing personnel and also of the supply chain managers. This understanding will help the company in evolving prospective marketing models; the supply chain managers will focus on the inventory in general and product specific in particular so that production sails along smoothly as per requirements of the company.

All the efforts of the administration which necessarily includes mentoring supply chain remain focused on retaining the customers and on innovative measures to attract new customers.  And to achieve this goal, the personnel must have good communication skills coupled with the skills of relationship management.

These two skills require, in fact, any skill for that matter, sensitive and intelligent mind; sensitive in the sense that you must be attentive enough to realize that your customer is feeling hurt or not by your words and behavior and intelligent in the sense that you must know that there is no end to developing any skill. If you end development of a skill, first of all, your intelligence gets stunted and frozen.