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Four Critical Factors in Fortifying Your Supply Chain

Strengthen your supply chain through integrated business planning, reliability engineering and asset optimization, digital insights, and transformational OEM relationships.

Supply Chain

More than ever, manufacturing’s role in the company’s supply chain is critical for reliably delivering on its customer requirements, consumer expectations, and financial performance. Market conditions have created a tsunami of special deviations from the norm for manufacturing.

And while consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturing professionals are committed to delivering for their stakeholders in the face of these deviations, the most challenging question facing them is how to ensure that their operations are the strongest link in their supply chain.

This article focuses on four critical factors in strengthening your supply chain: integrated business planning (IBP), reliability engineering and asset optimization, Industry 4.0 digital insights, and transformational OEM relationships. To address each, in turn, FSO Institute has sought the insights of industry subject matter experts Jon Doering, senior vice president supply chain, DecoPac; John Robertson, vice president life cycle engineering; Bob Gates, senior director, GE Digital; and Paul Schaum, partner + coach, FSO Institute.

FSO Institute: Jon, you have always been a strong advocate for integrated business planning. You have described it as necessary to link the “how we go to market,” forecasts, and the ability of the business to supply. How would you recommend a consumer products company pursue IBP?

Jon Doering: IBP’s power enables month-to-date business performance discussions, evaluation of performance against overall business enterprise objectives, and EBITDA performance. This is crucial information for leadership. So, whether it be in my current role or prior leadership roles, when considering IBP, I have always started with the following questions:

  • What is the current state of the business and why?
  • Do we have the long-term visibility to future business initiatives and expected outcomes?
  • Do we have facts and options to change the first two questions?

Previously, in meetings with my fellow leadership team, we were working to understand and solve for what we perceived as “present time issues” when we could and should have seen them months prior or at the onset of our strategic planning process. The recognition of need for integrated business planning lies within your reflection and ability to understand how you are operating today vs. how you need to operate tomorrow to maintain relevancy in the market.

Today might look like the following if you reflect on the state of your business: 

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