LEAN
ON ME
SUPPLY PARTNERS
HAVE NEVER BEEN
MORE CRI T ICAL
IN TODAY’S TOUCH AND GO, widely unpredictable
landscape, if you do not have a seamless supply chain
process, every link in the chain runs the risk of being
cumbersome and accident-prone. Or, as Nikolay
Osadchiy warns, peaks in demand can drive overtime
costs, stockouts and lost sales, while slowdowns leave
capacity idle and increase excess inventory.
In a piece Osadchiy, Associate Professor, ISOM,
at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School,
co-wrote for MIT Sloan Management Review, he
says that the impact on customer service levels—
not to mention the bottom line—can be significant.
Without good supply chain management, what should
be a seamless process can become more costly
than it could be in terms of the time and resources
it demands. “It’s a combination of hard and soft
skills. Pricing, process and inventory optimization is
important, but understanding your supplier’s pain
points and working with them so that the relationship
is mutually beneficial is really the key.”
HAVING A QUALITY
RELATIONSHIP IS
ACTIVE AND THE ONE
THAT GIVES SUPPLIERS
VOLUME. YOU CAN ALSO BE
A GOOD CUSTOMER TO A
SUPPLIER IF YOUR ORDERS TAKE
INTO ACCOUNT THE SUPPLIER’S
AVAILABLE CAPACITY.”
— NIKOLAY OSADCHIY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, ISOM,
EMORY UNIVERSITY’S GOIZUETA BUSINESS SCHOOL
milkshake 7
November 2022