How to Find Balance in the Supply Chain for Small Businesses

A good balance is achieved by bringing customers what they want, when they want it and achieving it at the lowest possible cost. The existence of a well-established system in corporate or large enterprises makes this search for balance and stabilization easy.

This is a little more difficult for the disorganized and messy nature of small businesses. That’s precisely what the purpose of the optimized supply chain—from Fortune 50 multinational companies to independent entrepreneurs—is to achieve.

In small businesses with limited back-end office resources, what is the best way to balance the needs with minimal possible spending and timely meeting?

On the one hand, you need to create the best possible product (which requires more money) and then take advantage of those optimized products that you can sell (which requires more money), then your business needs to ensure that customers’ demands and other logistics needs (which requires even more money) are understood by you.

Managing supply chains is like a complex superhero task. Large companies have a wide range of areas, from a single supply chain area to all their teams, that are targeted for supply chain optimization. But small business owners can relax because this article will help.

Many vendor chain managers will describe a supply chain as a process from your business to customers of goods and services from suppliers. However, supplier chains flow in both directions. Your products usually flow from suppliers to customers, and information and money flow in both directions. So if you are optimizing your supplier chain, you need to understand the balance of information and money.

Delivery Time, Delivery Times!

One of the most difficult questions that must be answered for a supplier chain is, "What is your supply time?"

Because the first thing customers pay attention to is when it will arrive. The same applies to the supplier as well, and certainly to the buyer ... This is not because the supply chain specialist does not know when to deliver, but because he knows a lot about the delivery time of the supply chain.

As a small business owner, "What can you tell me about your work?" invariably, you can speak for ever. Topics such as how business idea was born, what inspiring things were all about helped you continue and work on your business and also help you design or make products.

The supply chain specialists’ durations and delivery times are almost the same. Your customers have a delivery period to wait for when they order from you. (What is the timeframe that is usually set by you? but is this really the time it takes to purchase, package and ship the product? If so, what is the total time it took to physically exit the product from you and time to be sent to customers? And does that depend on the delivery mode the customer paid for? (Yes.)

There is also time for your suppliers to deliver their products to you. Delivery time for manufacturing and delivery time for raw materials and component suppliers is required for each stage of the process. There is no mention of 12-, 24-, or 72-hour deadlines that can add to your review and purchase "lead time"!

Understanding and managing deadlines is key to balancing your supply chain. If you know that you have not been able to send an order to your customer for 6 weeks, you are also aware that (due to the total of the periods mentioned above) you will not accept the order for 6 weeks unless that customer asks for it.

Increasing lead times by spending more with the freight expert to ensure your supply chain balance moves towards "optimized supply chain management with as little money as possible". Overtime rates would be extra to control the fees and to convey the products so that they can be transported from point A to point B. This is another tip from the scales.

Their skill is to know what they want and when they want it. Of course this must be done at the lowest possible cost. This also means lead time management. Is that it? Is this all it takes for small businesses to find balance in the supply chain?

No and yes. Understanding, managing and optimizing your company deadlines, reducing costs, receiving timely deliveries from your suppliers, managing production and inventory, and giving your customers what they want. It's really simple and also very difficult.