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3. What would you say is the best approach to preparing for and overcoming product or material shortages? The key is to anticipate and detect signs of disruption as early as possible: risks associated with a single-source component; geopolitical tensions in a country or region; rapidly changing commodity prices.
There are many ways to avert possible pitfalls around material shortages. Diversifying suppliers and trade will help avoid dependency and tensions while implementation of smarter SPM( supplier performance manager) and SRM( supplier relationship management) will help drive operational efficiencies.
JPB Système shares forecasts with its suppliers to better anticipate tensions and streamline replenishment. We also audit our suppliers to assess their production capacity, responsiveness, and ability to keep pace with our growth, and we have implemented long-term contracts to guarantee volumes. In addition, we aim to manage our stock with safety stock according to criticality, supplier lead times, and demand variability, and we always devise best-case and worst-case scenarios. To further counter problems of material shortages, we try to design products that limit components, materials, and suppliers that we already know might pose a potential risk.
4. How can companies successfully leverage emerging tech and processes within their day-to-day operations? It can sometimes be difficult to step outside our daily routine and look at new technologies or processes, but this is essential to remain competitive. We must accept that we need to invest time now to save time later. JPB Système has internal routines for exploring new technologies; if we identify potential
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