Manufacturing Synergies with Supply Chain Advance Quality Management

While product quality is a primary focus among Best-in-Class manufacturers, supply chain quality is a close second. Increasing suppliers’ performance, reducing part costs, and increasing visibility into suppliers all play a significant role in manufacturer quality management.

Supply chain management directly impacts overall quality and the profitability of any company.  It is increasingly important to take advantage of manufacturing and supply chain synergies to improve customer satisfaction, deepen employee engagement, and promote organizational performance.

Top-performing manufacturers have internalized the importance of supply chain synergies. Compared to All Others, the Best-in-Class are:

• 9x more likely to implement supply chain management as a technology that supports quality management.
• 6x more likely to track suppliers with a traceability system.
• 23% more likely to standardize quality business processes to improve supplier collaboration in new products, parts selection, warranty planning, and product obsolescence.
• 10% more likely to feel operational pressure to manage supply chain risk.
• 8% more likely to focus on the supply chain to increase performance, reduce part cost, and increase visibility into quality.

The Numbers: Manufacturer Buyer Intent in Supply Chain Management

Aberdeen captured 36 million buyer intent signals in its sub-sample of manufacturing categories over the past year. We identified the number of unique devices researching each week across 124,000 manufacturing firms globally (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Supply Chain Management Buyer Intent in Manufacturing

In aggregate, this Manufacturing index shows a sustained buyer intent signal in supply chain and steady interest in supply chain management (SCM): Manufacturing providers are looking to bring new and sophisticated analyses to the abundant data they maintain. A major push in manufacturing is the strong desire to convert better SCM into focused improvements in quality. The results show that SCM investments are a means to accomplish that goal.

Aberdeen’s intent data provides a macro-level view of how manufacturing and large groups of companies are consuming content, and where their interests lie. However, this data also provides a more granular, company-level view, down to the device ID. This yields unprecedented clarity into how specific organizations are consuming content, and where they might be making near-term investments.

How does supply chain management impact your manufacturing quality? Tell us what’s in your plans for the rest of 2019 and beyond.