Strategic Sourcing and Production Planning

Updated Nov 2024

In today’s competitive business landscape, working seamlessly with your suppliers and partners is key to success. By syncing up your production plans with your manufacturers and suppliers, you can avoid costly mistakes and keep your operations running smoothly. This strategic alignment can help prevent issues like product shortages, resource bottlenecks, and supply chain disruptions. A solid sourcing and planning strategy can streamline your operations, boost efficiency, and ultimately drive better business results.

By conducting a thorough internal analysis of your purchasing needs, you can uncover valuable insights into spending patterns across your business units. While each unit may have unique sourcing requirements, a streamlined approach can significantly improve efficiency.

Instead of engaging in lengthy RFP processes and negotiating with multiple suppliers, consider partnering with a manufacturing partner who offers a diverse vendor network. This strategic move empowers you to tap into a virtual factory, providing you with the flexibility and scalability to meet your evolving needs.

Find out how a great strategic sourcing process builds organizational resilience.

By utilizing CMs equipped with intelligent algorithms, purchasers can optimize factory selection based on specific product requirements, cost targets, and delivery deadlines. This data-driven approach eliminates the need for arbitrary choices based on factors like excess capacity or sales quotas.

With a centralized platform and a single point of accountability, you can simplify your electronics manufacturing process. Your orders will be efficiently routed to the most suitable factory, saving you time and effort. ERP tools seamlessly integrate supplier progress into your existing systems, providing real-time visibility into every stage of the process, from assembly to logistics.

MacroFab's technology platform and experienced team empower you to track performance and monitor the timeline of your assembly and final product. Additionally, you can leverage real-time order status tracking to stay informed and make data-driven decisions. By consolidating your supplier relationships into a strategic portfolio, you can achieve peak performance without the complexities of managing multiple vendors.

Effective production planning is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge in today's fast-paced business environment. By regularly aligning with your sales and marketing teams, you can develop a highly accurate demand forecast that reflects your customers' evolving needs. This strategic approach ensures that your production plans are optimized to meet market demand and minimize operational inefficiencies.

A well-defined production plan empowers you to make informed decisions about product mix, resource allocation, and inventory levels. By strategically allocating resources and prioritizing production, you can streamline your operations and reduce costs. Moreover, a robust production plan can help mitigate supply chain disruptions and ensure timely delivery of products to your customers.

Since your specific product mix will drive different raw materials and manufacturing needs, the forecast can match these requirements with the actual resources needed to fulfill the necessary demand. A well-built demand profile can be shared with your CM using collaborative ERP tools to ensure that the decision-makers on the production floor have the resources needed for fulfillment. When gaps in capability are identified, your CM will work with you to plan the expansion of current resources or acquisition of unique equipment as needed by your business.

Your CM will plan the schedule needed to satisfy your demand based on your forecast through the ERP collaboration. You can forecast with greater reliability to meet your metrics and budget by creating purchase orders with confidence. Quotes are delivered with transparent pricing in as little as one to three days. In lieu of the pain and frustration of tracking quotes from a variety of vendors, access a network of 70-plus factory partners with available capacity to get the most competitive prices globally.

Place your order on one central platform and let your CM handle the rest. The logistics team will source your components and can help find alternatives for out of stock or end of life (EOL) parts. Resources can be better aligned and used more effectively when planned through a system that recognizes the entire supply chain, as opposed to only a small piece of the information. Your team can place orders of any size and be sure that they will be produced to high standards and delivered on time. Payment terms can be provided for high-volume orders to qualified customers at globally competitive prices.

Without an integrated system, up to seven discrete procurement steps need to happen for each supplier in order to fulfill an order: a requisition must be placed, vendor selection happens, a purchase order is issued, documentation is received at the destination, an invoice for payment is received, reconciliation against a known receipt takes place and finally accounts payable makes a payment. With a customer and supplier system integration to meld the supply chain management, the process is drastically simplified. Reduced costs and increased efficiencies are gained by using collaborative tools between customers and suppliers.

An integrated system can eliminate the need for manual data entry and reduce the risk of errors. By automating tasks like purchase order generation, invoice processing, and payment approval, you can accelerate the entire procurement cycle. Additionally, a collaborative platform enables seamless communication and collaboration between buyers and suppliers, leading to faster response times and improved decision-making, reducing WIP.

MacroFab's integrated platform can manage your bill of materials and system supply chain to receive all of your enclosures and electromechanical components to build your finished product. Our system integration services can help consolidate the procurement requirements for your new product introduction (NPI) and prototyping for custom integration.

In addition to piece components within a BOM, we can also help you source unique interconnects, cabling and harnesses. Mechanical assembly, including electromechanical integration and system-level test for volume manufacturing, calls all be tracked within the MacroFab platform.

Consider the ease and benefits of integrating your manufacturing partners into your supply chain tools. Not only will your planning forecast become more transparent, but your negotiations with a large vendor count can now be reduced. MacroFab’s platform reduces the burden on your procurement logistics and allows you to focus on the key differentiators for your company.