For some it is a lands end to John O’ Groats bike marathon, to thers it meand looking at products from manufacture through to reatailer / point of sale.

True “end to end” for manufacturing companies is in my view much more than this. It has the same marathon elements mentioned above and means “getting visibility into supply, manufacture, distribution, retail and consumption”.

This is a  marathon in every way, and where do you start ? IFfyou start conventionally at supply and work through to consumption how can we judge what degree of flexibility is needed in manufacturing or material supply network ? So where do we start ?

Start with the customer! Lets do things correctly and work “right to left ”

With this approach true demand is seen and we can stop guessing. Does inventory profiling work ?and is what we call “supply chain management” just a way of managing warehouses ? When inventory and stock movements are analysed what do we see ? A mass of numbers with everyone using inventory to mask poor forecasting, inflexible operations, ineffective warehouse operations, logistics and retail aisle management.

Mapping right to left and analysing data properly gives us true damand. The output from this can be used to inform the organisation on how much inventory is needed and how an effective supply chain can be built. Moving upstream this informs on flexibility required in manufacturing together with how incoming material must be managed. Visibility an Pull are what is required, do you have them ?

I hav erecently done some work with a food manufacturer with hunderds of different products distributed to thousands of retail outlets. The picture was confused and chaotic  – until the process was mapped right to left and data through the supply chain was analysed. Then came the surprise ! The data does inform us on how many stock pockets are needed and where they should be, it also informs how frequently each product needs to be manufactured and in what quantities.

This gives us a true “end to end view” and align manufacturing to distribution and retail. Is it simpel ? No but it is possible and I recommend you take a look – now. The improvemnt possibilities are considerable, decreased stock, increased flexibility and customer satisfaction and of course profit !