March 14, 2024
Blog
Streamlining supply chains: A guide to efficient supplier compliance
Evolving customer demands, industry standards, and regulations define how products are developed, shipped, and disposed of across the global supply chain. Maintaining supplier compliance is a vital part of ensuring this is done seamlessly and accurately.
For large manufacturers, managing supplier goods involves a complex web of processes and stakeholders. From planning to operations, each step is crucial in ensuring smooth operations. However, where things often go awry—and costs skyrocket—is at the physical handoff from your supplier. One Loftware customer calculated that they spent $2.1M just on relabeling supplier materials alone.
Using Advanced Shipping Notices (ASNs) can be unreliable, causing chaos in receiving due to limited information. Mislabeled items, incorrect receipts, and excess inventory lead to wasted time and money. So, how can companies combat this issue?
A better path to labeling with the Cloud
Consider the label. Think about it — the label connects the supplier’s intent to your ERP and, equally important, to the part itself. What if you could control the labeling outside your four walls so that shipments from suppliers and other trading partners were labeled with the information you required? Your data, your barcodes, your instructions, your process?
Thanks to new advancements and the adoption of cloud-based labeling, you can make this a reality. By using data directly from your ERP and merging it with supplier actions, you ensure that inbound materials are labeled and formatted the right way — your way, securely. In addition, you can track goods with unprecedented visibility to respond faster and smarter to fluctuations in supply and demand.
The short- and long-term benefits of this approach are many and include:
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Eliminate relabeling, once and for all.
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Increase the velocity of inbound receiving.
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Reduce inventory and achieve JIT goals.
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Know when supplies are coming earlier so you can plan accordingly.
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Prioritize orders and keep suppliers in check.
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Improve visibility into suppliers, both big and small.
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Gain insight into supplier carrier costs.
Future-proof your labeling operations
It’s clear that standardizing on a centralized automated cloud platform enhances visibility and efficiency, improving inventory accuracy at suppliers and warehouses. Furthermore, extending centralized labeling with controlled access for suppliers reduces security risks and has zero supplier IT burden.
To discover how a cloud-based labeling solution can fit in your environment and save you both time and money, download our recent whitepaper!
