The pandemic has affected all corners of industry, its impact stretching far into businesses supply chains. As many businesses are quickly learning, staying still doesn’t work. To continue to thrive in a time of immense and mounting pressure, your supply chain must be adapted to cope.

What needs to happen for your supply chain to be resilient when coping with the pandemic? Let’s take a look…

Streamline your quality checking

If you’re a manufacturer producing goods that are in high demand during the pandemic, shaving time off quality checks will cause you problems in the long run. Don’t let your quality checking take the hit- make sure you’re getting ahead of the game with purposeful quality checking.

Tracking quality using spreadsheets is bound to slow you down. To speed things up whilst keeping organised, make sure your quality management data is living in an effective, cloud-based system that allows you to keep track easily.

Check your team are being safe

As businesses begin to reopen, it’s crucial that they are doing so safely- this applies to your internal team, but also to your suppliers and anyone else you’re working with. To keep your team and your customers safe, as well as keeping your business operating as much as possible, make regular compliance checks on Covid-secure measures, such as social distancing, hygiene and the use of PPE, where appropriate.

To keep your team safe from infection and to identify any problems early, it’s important you have a protocol in place for checking symptoms in staff and measuring how closely guidelines are being followed.

Accept the temporary

In the last 6 months, rules, regulations and ways of doing things have been changing week on week. Change is unravelling at a fast pace, so it’s important that your company has equipped your supply chain to adapt.

This starts with accepting that any measures you put in place might be short-term. If you have to implement a new measure into your manufacturing facilities, understand that it might have to be adjusted next month as guidelines continue to change.

Ensure that checking and reporting on the success of your measures, and the success of your KPIs in the challenging Covid-era are regular practices. This way, you’ll be prepared with the knowledge of what’s working and what’s not, giving you the best chance to spot where improvements are needed and adapt quickly.

Coping with change isn’t a simple thing, and for many businesses it’s more of a challenge now than ever. By using these tips to build resilience into your supply chain, you can help make sure that your business stands the best chance of continuing to thrive.

To learn more about how automation can improve your order & inventory management, get in touch with the Workhorse team today.