• How Your Green Business Can Mitigate Supply Chain Problems

  • Supply chain challenges, problems, and setbacks have always been seen as part of running a business. From sourcing the materials you need to shipping the finished product to your clients, you need a robust supply chain to keep your business running. How you deal with the challenges and problems that exist in your supply chain is essential to your business’ success. In this article, we will discuss how you can overcome these challenges in your green business.

    Understand Your Supply Chain
    Most of the companies that have issues with their supply chains do not understand their supply chains. A comprehensive analysis and understanding of your whole supply chain let you know what vulnerabilities exist as well as predict which problems are likely to come up in the future. By doing so, you can put measures in place to help mitigate supply chain problems.

    Address Cyber Threats and Vulnerabilities
    It is almost impossible to run a business without the use of data and information dissemination among different partners. For all that technology does to enable both of these things, it also introduces threats that can cripple businesses and whole industries.

    A supply chain is as strong as its weakest link, and this is why it is important to assess any cyber threats in your supply chain. By doing so, you can ensure that malicious third-party actors cannot interfere with your supply chain. This can be done through training employees and everyone involved in security best practices, improving your processes, and updating and upgrading your IT infrastructure regularly.

    Diversify Your Suppliers
    Having one or just a few suppliers has always been frowned upon. This is because if a major supplier is unavailable, that could spell doom for your business. A great example is one cited on Satelliteindustries.com where they explain how winter weather and snowstorms in Texas have affected the sanitation and green industries due to grounding businesses that supply the raw materials required in these industries.

    To overcome this challenge, a lot of businesses have one main supplier and several other suppliers they can rely on in case of an emergency. Additionally, businesses are advised to have suppliers in different geographic regions. If the companies that rely on the suppliers in Texas had suppliers in other regions, perhaps the raw material shortage would have been avoided.

    Use Shipping To Your Advantage
    A shortage of drivers has always been a challenge for most types of businesses, but things have gotten a lot worse during the pandemic. This reduced number of drivers is cited as one of the reasons for supply chain challenges for green businesses. Fewer drivers mean that you cannot rely on the frequent delivery of smaller orders.

    To take advantage of shipping, you need to opt for larger, less frequent shipments. Larger shipments not only save you money but also give you some cushion to work with in case your next shipment is delayed for any reason.

    The failure to understand your supply chain as well as the risks that can lead to supply chain failures will affect your business. It is always best to be prepared by understanding your supply chain and putting measures to protect it against any issues that may arise.

    Posted in Topics:Other Stuff, Tags: on April 5, 2021