Tag Archives: supplier management

HelloFresh Is Using Technology To Take a Huge Bite Out of a Multitrillion Dollar Industry

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When families are counting on you for dinner, an unreliable supply chain is not an option. HelloFresh focuses on every step of the farm-to-door journey, shipping meal kits to millions of Americans, each filled with all of the ingredients necessary to prepare three to five different meals.

I recently found out how HelloFresh is using technology to reduce waste, improve quality processes and streamline supplier relations, all while doubling orders and revenue year-over-year.

It’s estimated that 40 percent of the food supply in the United States goes to waste because of over-portioning and wasteful distribution. Because of the attention to correct portioning, HelloFresh reduces the dinner food waste of its customers by at least 21 percent, resulting in a staggering reduction of food waste each week.

The company has over 2,500 employees in the United States who provide millions of meals that are carefully planned, carefully sourced and delivered … Read more...

Pivoting Towards Progress: Driving Agility in Quality and Supplier Management by Foolproofing Supply Chains

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As the saying goes: “Progress doesn’t always follow a straight line.” No matter how severe short-term challenges can be, what is critical is that you’re always moving forward.

While predicting future changes or disruptions is next to impossible (particularly in the business world), planning for every major scenario is crucial and is essentially what sets forward-thinking leaders apart from the rest.


Navigating through Disruption: Current Challenges in Quality and Supplier Management


While no industry or sector is immune to the effects and aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are some that have been harder hit than others. The quality and supplier management space just happen to fall into that category. Within these practice areas, supply chains have gone through a severe disruption.

While there is a breadth of challenges that supply chain leaders have been facing, the most common ones include the following:

Type of DisruptionHow They are Brought
… Read more...

How Hello Fresh and Intelex Are Managing the Global Food Supply Chain

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Today’s global food supply chains are more complex than they’ve ever been. Until recently, consumers ate the food they grew in their communities and would adjust their diet to suit the seasonal availability of various products like fruits and vegetables. Today, consumers can have food from any part of the world as part of their regular diet. In the United States alone, food travels on average 1,300 miles from farm to fork, with 33% of products and 80% of seafood imported from other countries. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates food products that are processed by more than 300,000 different facilities in over 150 different countries.

In such a complex supply chain, food travels around the world in the custody of multiple agents, with variations in documentation and processing resulting in loss of critical information about food origins and authenticity. In many cases, the food itself goes … Read more...

Mitigating Risk in Global Food Sourcing Begins with Integrated Supplier Management

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Increasing public concern for food quality and global sourcing of food products is moving the entire food and beverage industry towards creating better ways and means of ensuring the safety of what we eat.

It’s also driving the creation of an interconnected global system for the production and distribution of food. During the last decade, many public and private standards for food safety and quality have been developed around the world and today there are more worldwide standards than ever before. The trend is clear – food safety is top of mind concern on a global scale.

With the finalization of Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and compliance Preventive Controls rules for large companies already announced, the increased need for integrated supply chain management has become paramount.

What are the most important trends impacting food and beverage companies today?

Source: LNS Research Food and Beverage industry survey data

Still, it’s … Read more...

Suppliers Want You to Be Their Customer of Choice

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Customer of ChoiceIs your company recognized by its suppliers as a Customer of Choice?  What exactly does this distinction mean and why is it important?  A Customer of Choice is a customer recognized by many of its suppliers as a preferred customer for a number of reasons.  From their talented workforce and integrated management systems to their global processes and approach to supplier collaboration, customers that can achieve this distinction can unlock new sources of competitive advantage with the help of their suppliers.

When suppliers recognize that they have a Customer of Choice on their hands, they have a tendency to go out of their way to service that particular customer’s needs.  In these situations, suppliers will assign their most talented employees, allocate scarce resources, provide additional discounts, prioritize production capacity, give early access to new products, and go out of their way to solve customer problems so that their customers can … Read more...

5 Reasons to Keep Suppliers & Buyers in the Loop

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charts_businessOrganizations love to make design changes to their products on a regular basis.  Any firm producing a product, be it the Tesla Model S or McDonald’s French fries, strives to introduce incremental improvements to add new features, reduce costs, comply with the latest regulations, and remain competitive.  Sometimes these changes have an impact on suppliers.

  • Tesla just released its Version 8 software that introduces over 200+ enhancements for the Model S Autopilot technology.  Some of these changes will have an impact on Tesla’s suppliers due to integration between purchased components and Tesla’s design.
  • In 2008, McDonald’s formally announced it changed its recipe for French Fries by changing to trans-fat-free oil to address general health concerns over cardiovascular disease. Imagine the impact of this change to the supplier providing the trans-fat oil from a capacity, inventory, and profit standpoint.

The impact that design changes have on suppliers is significant.  Let’s take … Read more...

3 Ways It Pays to Turn Suppliers Into Partners

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SuppliersHave you ever stopped to think about how important your suppliers are to your business? Do you view suppliers as business partners and an extension of your business, or do you see them as a reactive service provider that exists to fulfill demand?

All too often we tend to treat supplier relationships as contractual agreements rather than mutually beneficial partnerships. This behavior grossly under-estimates the tremendous benefit suppliers can provide to your firm’s day-to-day operations.  This “servant” paradigm is not the right way to go about conducting business with suppliers for a number of reasons.  Instead, let’s talk about three key reasons why we need a fundamental shift in our thinking away from the supplier “servant” paradigm to suppliers being members of a critical department in your organization – a key business function that adds value for your customers on a daily basis.

Reason # 1: Start with Trust

Relationships … Read more...

3 Characteristics of The Modern Supply Chain

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Today having a modern and agile supply chain can mean the difference between staying afloat and sinking.  Over 80% of businesses report experiencing at least one supply chain disruption in 2014.  With constant and rapidly changing market conditions, organizations need to be lean and flexible in order to respond to disruptions quickly and effectively.

Organizations who adopt modern supply chain practices that are flexible, account for disruptions, and leverage new technology fair better in the long run. Let’s take a deeper look into how Technology, Continuous Improvement, and Resilience help supply chains remain relevant and sustainable.

Technology
Innovation is key to business improvement and supply chain management is no exception. To meet ever-changing consumer demands, organizations must continually optimize the productivity of their supply network due to global competition.  Leveraging modern technologies can help simplify processes, reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, and provide greater control over your supply chain.

IoT … Read more...

Webinar – Improve Visibility and Collaboration with Supplier Relationship Management

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Working with multiple suppliers, across various touch points can make tracking activities, especially when problems arise, exceptionally difficult. Phone calls, face-to-face meetings, and emails can sabotage productivity and compromise data integrity.

This free on-demand webinar facilitated by Peter-Elias Alouche (Quality SME and Product Development enthusiast) addresses the Supplier Management challenges that companies continue to grapple with, providing a best practices framework for how you can effectively ensure a compliant, resilient, and high-performing supply chain in your organization.

Topics covered include:

  • Manage your suppliers in a comprehensive approved vendor list
  • How to improve collaboration with your suppliers to address challenges as they occur
  • How to define the structure of your supply chain at the facility level
  • How to manage supplier certifications and documents that are critical for your business

Watch a preview below or click here to watch the full webinar.

… Read more...

Webinar – Essential Strategies for Supplier Management: Optimizing Performance, Governance & Compliance

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These days, supply chains are complex, regulations are strict and the consequences of supplier noncompliance can be far-reaching. What this means is that your relationship with your suppliers and your ability to manage and act on supplier data has become increasingly important. Especially since effective supplier management is at the root of your ability to deliver a quality product or service.

In this free webinar, Eric Morris covers the top strategies that companies can use to optimize their supplier management program, avoid the negative impacts of supplier noncompliance, and improve supplier performance and quality across the supply chain.

Key topics covered include:

  • The essentials of supplier data management: performance, governance and compliance
  • Methods for tracking supplier requirements and certifications
  • How to assess and bench-mark supplier performance and implement streamlined audit plans
  • Considerations for evaluating the quality of shipments and deliverables
  • Best practices in ensuring supplier compliance and performance

Watch a … Read more...