Top 5 Problems Impacting Supply Chain Issue Resolution Processes

Key Takeaways

• Reliance on ad hoc processes combined with the lack of shared systems translates into lengthy resolution times for daily supply chain issues that occur across internal sites and external supply chain partners.
• TraceLink Supply Chain Work Management application provides a network-based, multienteprise supply chain issue management solution that results in a faster, more strategic approach to issue resolution.

By Nicholas Gasse

While supply chain teams make their best efforts to resolve issues as quickly as possible, they have not had a digital system designed specifically to facilitate structured collaboration and work management between internal teams and supply chain partners—until now.

Any issue—regardless of how small it is or whether it’s a product or business process defect—can paralyze a supply chain. Lengthy issue resolution processes can put your supply chain at risk. Working with internal teams and supply chain partners to resolve an issue can take five to six weeks or longer. During this period, shipment delays, material shortages, out-of-spec products, and other business process and product quality defects can quickly escalate into supply chain disruptions that lead to late deliveries to customers. 

The reliance on ad hoc processes and the lack of shared systems is at the root of the lengthy resolution times. Resolving supply chain issues through a web of emails, meetings, and spreadsheets slows the entire process and puts critical information at risk of going unrecorded, jeopardizing your supply chain operations. Here are five major reasons why the current approach is so ineffective:

1. Poor visibility. Most supply chain management teams lack a comprehensive view of all incidents across the organization, the status of their resolution processes, and their potential impact. As a result, there is no visibility into potential disruptions created as these issues go unresolved.
2. No institutional memory to support future improvement. Manufacturing companies often lack a recorded institutional memory of learnings from past incidents and resolution patterns that can support root cause analysis and continuous process improvement. Supply chain teams instead send and receive incident reports via email and spreadsheets that do not keep a historical record of resolutions to similar problems..
3. No incident prioritization or structured resolution process. Supply chain managers often spend between 50-80% of their day in meetings simply learning about incidents, which means they have less time to set strategic priorities and develop intelligent solutions to problems.
4. Failure to get the right people involved. It’s not always clear which stakeholders should be part of cross-functional and cross-enterprise teams formed to resolve an issue. This lack of clear accountability leads to confusion over roles, responsibilities, and response methodologies.
5. Unstructured collaboration and siloed information. Cross-functional and cross-enterprise teams have no alternative but to rely on disparate and unstructured communication tools like email, phone calls, and meetings to resolve issues. As a result, vital information often gets lost and deadlines are missed. 

While supply chain teams make their best efforts to resolve issues as quickly as possible, they have not had a digital system designed specifically to facilitate structured collaboration and work management between internal teams and supply chain partners—until now.

A better way with multienteprise supply chain issue management software

TraceLink Supply Chain Work Management is a workflow-driven collaboration solution for capturing, analyzing, resolving, correcting, and preventing supply chain issues. This purpose-built solution empowers supply chain operations at every level by:

• Giving line-level employees tools to quickly report issues like material shortages and quality deviations in a single cloud-based solution shared with supply chain partners.
• Providing middle management team members with visibility into all issues that are occurring by frequency. 
• Supplying executive leaders with real-time summary data for better strategic decision-making regarding supply chain risks and opportunities. 

TraceLink Supply Chain Work Management is a better way to resolve supply chain issues. 

Download our supply chain WORK management best practices handbook to learn more.

Learn more in our Supply Chain Work Management Resource Center.