Visibility. Efficiency. Profit

By Mikael Milsson

A supply chain is a row of activities set up between a supplier and a customer with the purpose to provide value to a customer. If the supply chain is smooth then it’s also profitable. In this article I will show how you can make your supply chain smoother. While the parts of the supply chain can be different from case to case, the general design usually takes the form of: Marketing, ordering, manufacturing, delivery, payment and finally, interaction. While all the activities contribute to the profitability, I would say that the most important is step number one. Marketing is the same thing for a business as blood is for the body. If the marketing doesn’t work, no business is generated and if no business is generated then you make no money. You must have the marketing to work properly and one way to do that is the Internet.

At the end of this article you will find an opportunity to take advantage from the internet in your business. When customers know that you exist and have a product or service to offer, they must be able to send you the correct orders in a smooth way. There are many opportunities here, but the customers have to know how to order and what information you need. With a correct order the manufacturing process can start. This part is the most specific one – and for that reason it’s difficult to describe what things can go wrong. But one way is to look for bottlenecks and see what you can do to eliminate them.The same bottleneck approach can be used in the delivery part as well. How about the flight capacity to the destination? Is it tricky to pass goods through customs? Would it profitable to hire someone to deliver to the customers? These are some questions you can ask when trying to get this part in order.

While the manufacturing and delivery parts are similar, the ordering and the payment parts also have some things in common. The customer has to know how to pay and you must inform them of how to go about it. As it’s much cheaper to keep an existing customer than to get a new one, the interaction part is important to generate future business. It enables you to inform the customers about future offers and the customers to give you feed back if they are satisfied with you and if there is anything you can improve on. From this, we find ourselves here with a couple of questions to be answered regarding your business. I wish you good luck with your efforts and look forward to hearing from you to see what we can do together in order to improve your profitability.

Biography

Minimpex was started by Mikael Nilsson who has a Master Degree in Applied Logistics from the Royal Institute of Technology, the number one technological institution in Sweden.

He has a background in the telecom business where he gained knowledge in the entire supply chain, from manufacturing via transportation to the customer end. He has worked in a dozen countries and has experience from a wide range of cultures and language skills in English, Swedish, Thai, German, Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese. Mikael resides in Stockholm, Sweden and Bangkok, Thailand. He like cars, golfing, travelling and flying.