Supply chain management (SCM) is the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the ultimate provision of product and service packages required by end customers. Supply Chain Management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption (supply chain). One may consider Supply Chain Management as "design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand, and measuring performance globally." Supply chains are becoming increasingly interconnected, complex and global with many entities working in unison to source, convert and deliver products to customers. Supply chains need to adapt to changes over which they have no control, such as natural disasters, political and economic instability, regulations,…etc. In addition to all these, trends such as rapidly changing technological and digital landscape, increasing demand for quality and differentiation, scarcity of resources…etc put supply chains under tremendous pressure to perform.

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Activities must be well coordinated in order to achieve the lowest total logistics cost. Trade-offs may increase the total cost if only one of the activities is optimized. For example, full truckload (FTL) rates are more economical on a cost per pallet basis than less than truckload (LTL) shipments. If, however, a full truckload of a product is ordered to reduce transportation costs, there will be an increase in inventory holding costs which may increase total logistics costs. It is therefore imperative to take a systems approach when planning logistical activities. These trade-offs are key to developing the most efficient and effective Logistics and SCM strategy. Some key terms used are:

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Information: Integration of processes through the supply chain to share valuable information, including demand signals, forecasts, inventory, transportation, potential collaboration, etc.

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Inventory Management: Quantity and location of inventory, including raw materials, work-in-progress (WIP) and finished goods.

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Cash-Flow: Arranging the payment terms and methodologies for exchanging funds across entities within the supply chain.

 

Supply chain execution means managing and coordinating the movement of materials, information and funds across the supply chain. The flow is bi-directional.

 

Our experienced supply chain managers are ready to review your needs and provide you guidance as well as establish a first class SCM system for your organization.

 

OUR SERVICES IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT (SCM)

Our goal is to empower companies to use their supply chain as a strategic weapon. We want to help companies adapt to dynamic environments and go beyond a near-term roadmap to build long-term capabilities that will sustain their competitive advantage. AGS-Engineering’s approach combines cutting-edge digital technology, expertise in the field, and a database of industry Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Here are some of the major services we provide our clients in Supply Chain Management (SCM):

• Supply Chain Diagnostics

• Supply Chain Strategy

• Supply Chain Dashboard

• Network Optimization

• Inventory Optimization

• Supply Chain Risk Management

• Supply Chain Consulting & Outsourcing Services

• Domestic and Offshore Procurement Support Services

• Domestic and Offshore Supply Market Intelligence

• Implementing Supply Chain Management and Procurement Software and Simulation Tools

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SUPPLY CHAIN DIAGNOSTICS

If needed, we work with our clients on in-depth and accurate supply chain diagnostics that is comprehensive, objective, quantitative and actionable – allowing a thorough evaluation of the performance of their existing supply chain. From forecasting to procurement, from supplier relationship management to production, from maintenance to logistics and warehouse management, from distribution to billing and returns, we measure success using a full range of quantitative and qualitative metrics, which together provide insights, as well as an actionable roadmap from current state to the desired future state. Our Supply Chain Assessments are conducted by seasoned industry experts, process and subject matter experts, and are supported by a world-class global leadership network, infrastructure, a rich knowledge base of best-practice methodologies, as well as commodity and market intelligence capabilities. We make sure to understand a client’s short, medium and long term strategic plan, interview key stakeholders to understand requirements, objectives and concerns, we review market and industry dynamics and their implications for the client’s network, we apply proven tools and templates to rigorously analyze various aspects of the supply chain and identify areas of opportunity. Our supply chain management professionals use a structured analytical approach and a suite of diagnostic tools in their analyses. Some of the benefits of supply chain diagnostics are cost reduction across the supply chain, improved customer service, maximized asset utilization, more accurate forecasting, and proactive identification of potential supply chain risks. Our approach incorporates people, organization, process, technology, and performance measurement to identify supply chain issues and drive understanding of the trade-offs between cost and flexibility in response to ever increasing expectations from the organization. We carefully evaluate your current performance using product profile, sales volumes, current and expected growth rates, supply chain costs, service levels, fill rates, IT infrastructure, tools, machinery, technology….and more. Our analysis, based on industry and global best practices and benchmarks, will help identify gaps in performance and potential areas of improvement that will be addressed to meet your organization’s strategic plan. Major findings are sorted by capability area and improvement opportunities are mapped to your organization priorities and supply chain competencies.

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SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGY

In today’s increasingly globalized and digital economy, a well-aligned supply chain strategy supports the business strategy and drives it. AGS-Engineering’s supply chain strategy services help enterprises align their supply chain processes and operating models with their business strategy. We design, develop and implement supply chain strategies that create resilient supply chains thereby delivering positive business results. By reducing expenses, improving agility & flexibility and responsiveness we can help your organization boost profitability and competitiveness in the dynamic global marketplace. Putting your customer at the center, Supply Chain processes are made horizontal and work across internal, vertical organizations to deliver value to customers. People, processes, technology and assets must work without flaws, meeting and exceeding customer expectations to win in the marketplace.  Carefully taking into account your business goals, we work with you to develop supply chain strategies that drive superior competitive advantage and value. We align your supply chain operations with the market and customer values, adding a new dimension to the overall supply chain – one that drives greater levels of customer service and higher profitability. Enterprises can only grow as fast as their supply chains. We help enterprises develop global supply chain strategies that can support their business needs today and tomorrow for global growth and expansion. Suppliers are a key to the success of every supply chain, we help you work with your suppliers to develop mutual capabilities to improve supply chain effectiveness and customer service. Supply chains today must be robust enough to withstand social, economic and geopolitical risks, besides new and emerging threats, such as cyberattacks. AGS-Engineering integrates supply chain risk management into your supply chain strategy to help you identify and mitigate risks quickly. Furthermore, our experts will help you redesign your supply chain operations and processes to operationalize and ensure effective implementation of your strategies. Our real-time data analysis and intuitive supply chain dashboards help you evaluate the performance of your supply chain against predefined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and benchmarks and take improvement measures. Successful supply chain strategies are sustainable. Jointly with your team, we'll design and develop a supply chain strategy that not only achieves current objectives, but helps sustain success even under rapidly changing economic conditions, corporate strategy, and technology as well as social, political and environmental factors. With an established global network, we are working to identify product-wise manufacturing and storage locations, evaluate transportation options, optimize resource allocation, understand and manage performance, and implement more efficient, more effective processes.

 

SUPPLY CHAIN DASHBOARD

Today’s global business environment requires supply chains to be more agile and resilient. Therefore, supply chain managers need greater supply chain visibility for timely and effective decision-making. Our supply chain dashboard provides decisive insights to help you monitor and manage your supply chain performance effectively.   

 

Our supply chain dashboard, with highly customizable and standardized set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, allows efficient review of supply chain operations throughout the chain, across regions, business units, warehouses, manufacturing plants and brands. The supply chain dashboards enhance data visibility by delivering intuitive visuals that measure current performance against historical trends and targets, providing supply chain stakeholders with the insight needed to take targeted action. Interactive charts, coupled with our streamlined data collection process, enables your team to focus on advanced analysis and action because they will be working with real-time information. With an effective and responsive supply chain performance dashboard, enterprises can make better and timely decisions to drive value to customers, shareholders, and various stakeholders across the supply chain. Our supply chain dashboard gives you better view of every aspect of the supply chain, allowing you to uncover upcoming trouble spots and initiate action before these turn into big issues. The dashboard also provides a mechanism to track progress of various supply chain initiatives against identified metrics and can be deployed rapidly and seamlessly into your supply chain network with user-friendly interfaces. Customization to organizational needs is possible.

 

NETWORK OPTIMIZATION

Network optimization adaptations are often focused on improving service levels and reducing working capital across the end-to-end distribution network. Companies should align their network optimization programs with long-term business strategies. We develop dynamic supply chain network optimization capabilities that align the network to long-term business strategy and allow ongoing evaluation of assets as business and environmental conditions change. Supply chain design is a critical business function. Our structured approach to supply chain design and network optimization delivers substantial reductions in end-to-end supply chain costs, including purchasing, production, warehousing, inventory and transportation, and improves service levels. AGS-Engineering’s supply chain network optimization services help you reduce overall supply chain costs, reduce inventory of raw materials, WIP, and finished goods, enhance profit margins, develop an ongoing capability to evaluate business and environmental changes that affect the supply chain, improve flexibility. Our supply chain network modeling can help you reduce global supply chain network complexities and improve responsiveness to customer needs by optimizing asset locations across the supply chain. AGS-Engineering’s supply chain design experts identify, prioritize and map the optimum solutions to your priorities and supply chain competencies with a variety of techniques, such as what-if scenarios, sensitivity analysis and others. We measure our contributions to our client's supply chain and distribution networks and their performance by looking at savings realized, value created and delivered. We not only help companies recognize opportunities for positive change, but also help them achieve that change systematically, by making their network operations more flexible, more efficient and more responsive to changes in business scenarios, such as new product introductions, shifts in demand and consumption patterns, changes in regulations…etc. Our network optimization strategies are designed to make supply chains more resilient to address current changes and future uncertainties.

 

INVENTORY OPTIMIZATION

Many questions are of key importance: What is the right level of inventory?  At what point in the supply chain?  How do I know what is optimal?  Is your enterprise prepared for seasonal shifts? Enterprises following conventional single-stage, single-item inventory optimization model that looks at each SKU and stock location will be out of the game in today’s global, interconnected business operations. They will suffer from frequent stock outs, overstock, unhappy customers and blocked working capital. We can help you improve your inventory management capabilities, and create more responsive, more efficient supply chains. We can assess your current inventory situation and devise a plan to simultaneously increase product availability and service levels while reducing investment in working capital. Inventory Optimization involves multi-echelon inventory optimization, SKU rationalization, cost-effective postponement strategies, optimization of all inventory components, enhanced supplier intelligence for precise inventory planning, strategic use of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), demand forecasting and planning, development of Just-in-Time (JIT) strategies. We can devise an improvement plan to reduce working capital and increase inventory velocity. The Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization approach is designed to meet demands of the most dynamic and complex global supply chains, offering the right balance between inventory costs and desired customer service levels. Inventory data from existing clients help establish benchmarks. You will have optimal inventory levels across all locations, for all products, throughout the supply chain, reduced working capital to maintain desired service levels, optimized inventory and replenishment policies by SKU, increased inventory turns, improved or maintained service levels, fill rate and other metrics, reduced distribution and procurement expenses.

 

SUPPLY CHAIN RISK MANAGEMENT

The rapid globalization of supply chains has made them vulnerable to various supply chain disruptions. Various factors such as economic unrests, changes in demand, or natural or accidental disasters can have long- and short-term impacts on the business. That's why enterprises need reliable and resilient supply chains to minimize the negative impacts of disruptions on revenues, costs, and customers. Understanding and managing supply chain risk is critical for building and maintaining resilient supply chains. Our supply chain risk management services enable clients to proactively assess, prioritize and manage risks for improved business results. We will help you map your supply networks, identify risks, assess potential impacts and prepare supply chain contingency plans well in advance to mitigate risks for business continuity. While we ensure supply chain optimization, we incorporate supply chain risk assessment and management into your supply chain strategy.  We segment supply chain risk into short-term, medium-term and long-term risks to better prioritize action plans.  We use a proprietary Supply Chain Risk Management Model to aggregate risks across the supply chain and catalog mitigation strategies for effectively addressing the identified risks. Visual features allow you to see your risk map and facilitate cross-functional dialogue to mitigate the risk. Timely and accurate identification of risk is critical to ensure supply chain security. We use inputs from multiple client data sources such as interviews, expense data, inventory levels, supplier score-cards, contract data, supplier audit data and supplier surveys, supplier financial performance, social media feeds, news articles and trend forecasts to ensure that you are always a step ahead. We use Artificial Intelligence Data Analysis and intelligent algorithms to consolidate and classify real-time data from thousands of sources to identify patterns and trends in your supply chain. Data is reviewed and analyzed by experienced analysts in the field. The engine provides recommendations on current and future risks through predictive modeling. With a wide array of real-time data inputs and extensive analysis engines, our supply chain risk management services offer actionable insights through supply chain management dashboards tailored for executive and operational stakeholders, with multiple alert options, identifying and addressing urgent issues before they turn into major problems. Supply chain risk alerts can be valuable only if the consequences are well understood and they enable timely and appropriate risk mitigation response. Each risk type is prioritized based on "event likelihood" and "business impact."  Short-term risks are tagged as "urgent" whereas long-term risks are tagged as "strategic."  The noise is filtered out to enable you to focus on key issues and not get distracted. Our comprehensive approach toward supply chain risk management ensures that companies implement the right level of structure, rigor and consistency in managing supply chain risks across multiple business units, functions and regions. The unique combination of robust processes, extensive data feeds, artificial intelligence capability, predictive analytics and reporting frameworks help enterprises proactively identify and mitigate supply chain risks.

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SUPPLY CHAIN CONSULTING & OUTSOURCING SERVICES

Resilient supply chains not only help enterprises respond swiftly and effectively to economic, technological and market disruptions, but also make them gain a competitive advantage. The goal of a resilient supply chain is to minimize the negative impacts of these disruptions on revenue, costs, and customers. Our supply chain consulting services help enterprises create and manage high-performance, resilient supply chains that drive sustained, profitable growth, even under swiftly changing circumstances. Supply chain consulting engagements at AGS-Engineering are led by seasoned industry, process and subject matter experts, with a world-class infrastructure underneath, a rich knowledge base of supply chain best-practice methodologies, an expansive global leadership network and peerless intelligence capabilities. 

Whether it’s improving stock delivery through better supply planning or reducing shipment costs through effective logistics management, we are ready to help you. Using best-in-class processes, cutting-edge tools and a deep understanding of market-leading supply chain organizations we help enterprises move beyond cost savings and make supply chain their competitive advantage. Our expertise is global. Supply Chain Services include:

• Logistics Management

• Inventory Management

• Planning & Forecasting

• Supply Chain Data Management

We provide customized solutions by first understanding your business needs and then working with you to develop solutions that meet your requirements. 

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DOMESTIC AND OFFSHORE PROCUREMENT SUPPORT SERVICES

By using our world-class research, analytics and execution capabilities to support your category managers, you can focus on negotiating better deals, collaborating with business stakeholders and managing key supplier relationships. Each support engagement is configured to the specific requirements of each particular enterprise we work with. Support engagements include spend analysis, sourcing execution support, on-demand market intelligence, RFx and auction services, contracting support, supplier performance management, ongoing savings tracking and reporting. By working with our support teams, enterprise procurement teams also get access to our unrivaled category expertise, gained over thousands of projects, in addition to a knowledge-base of sourcing best-practices, benchmarking information, supplier network, analytical tools and templates. All this is further supported by our cloud-based integrated procurement platform. Procurement transformation brings impressive returns on investment, increases in organizational efficiency and effectiveness, jumps in productivity, stronger and more strategic relationships with suppliers, and substantial savings. Our team has helped many global enterprises achieve ambitious objectives, helping restructure and revitalize enterprise teams with improved organization, processes and technology. AGS-Engineering’ integrated procurement services reside on a solid infrastructure consisting of powerful technology, skilled talent, global operations, and industry and category expertise. The cloud-based eProcurement platform streamlines and automates the entire source-to-pay work flow, including spend analysis, sourcing, contract management, supplier performance management and procure-to-pay. With offices and operations centers across the Americas, Southeast Asia and Europe, we bring local market knowledge, global expertise and global economics to bear on your procurement objectives. Best-in-class procurement organizations source at least 20% of their enterprise spend from low-cost countries. Whether or not your procurement team has experience in low-cost country sourcing, we can help you achieve more value more rapidly. On average, incremental savings of 25% to 70% are generally possible when sourcing from low-cost country sources, instead of domestic suppliers. Our low cost country sourcing experts bring strong category-specific technical know-how, understanding of local policy trends, tax rules and trade-related regulations to the table. This local knowledge is augmented with our industry-leading analytical capabilities, market intelligence and category expertise to help our clients minimize risk, maximize value and adopt low-cost country sourcing flawlessly. Our low-cost country sourcing services include:

• Category Assessment

• Market & Country Assessment

• Supplier Identification & Assessment

• Sourcing and Negotiations

• Execution and Implementation

 

DOMESTIC AND OFFSHORE SUPPLY MARKET INTELLIGENCE

Access to timely, accurate information is a big strategic advantage. AGS-Engineering provides highly customized market intelligence to help procurement professionals make informed decisions with confidence. We offer custom-configured engagement models. Our supply market intelligence capabilities include:

• Category Intelligence

• Supplier Intelligence

• Sourcing Intelligence

• Custom Research

Our category specialists and large external network of subject matter experts continuously track commodities and materials markets. These include supply, demand and commodity price trends, market dynamics, mergers and acquisitions, new technologies and innovation, regulatory changes and others. Using the in-depth domain knowledge of our experts in the field, together with formal research through numerous third-party resources, we’re able to deliver data-driven insights to support the most complex decision-making requirements in sourcing and procurement. AGS-Engineering through AGS-TECH Inc. ( http://www.agstech.net ) maintains one of the most extensive supplier networks and database across the globe. In addition we have strong relationships with third-party sources. Taking advantage of our proprietary database and network, we’re able to provide fully dimensional evaluations of supplier capabilities, ranging from financial health to performance, diversity and sustainability ratings. In addition, our market intelligence team constantly conducts original research customized to client requirements. Whether you’re looking globally for new suppliers or only in a specific geography, or are seeking in-depth, multi-criteria assessments of your existing suppliers, we are ready to help you. We help our clients identify the right sourcing strategy as well as provide support with research during the entire sourcing process. In addition to category and supplier analyses, we bring spend and savings benchmarks, cost drivers analysis, clean-sheet costing, make vs. buy decisions, sourcing and contracting best practices. Tracking organization and category-level metrics and commodity indices we help sourcing professionals execute faster and conduct fact-based and more effective negotiations. We also offer custom research services in a highly flexible delivery model to reduce risk and enable our clients to focus on decision-making. Examples of services include:

• Finding the best country from which to source specific goods, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing from low-cost offshore centers. Helping clients throughout the offshore vendor selection and importing process.

• Identifying promising high-impact technological innovations

• Analyzing supply chain risk

• Identifying and sourcing green and environmentally friendly substitutes

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IMPLEMENTING SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND PROCUREMENT SOFTWARE AND SIMULATION TOOLS

Relevant software and simulation tools are used in our work. As needed, we do provide training on these tools to our clients, and have them proactively use such tools if desired. Using artificial intelligence-based tools, built on proprietary algorithms and field-tested in hundreds of complex engagements, we can analyze through high volumes of data rapidly for sourcing and industry-specific details and implement these tools at your enterprise and train you so you can use it on your own. We also have cloud-based, source-to-pay procurement software that delivers comprehensive spend, sourcing and procurement functionality in a single, unified platform native to cloud, mobile and touch technologies. Our mobile-native design allows you to source, procure, pay and manage all related processes on the go. Unlike other standard procurement software solutions, using our software solution you can access your entire workbench anywhere, anytime, on any device – tablet, mobile phone, laptop or PC. You can work on a touchscreen or a keyboard. Our procurement software is easy to set up, deploy, learn and use, with no extensive training needed. The software is designed around how sourcing and procurement professionals really work, and allows you to switch easily and quickly between all related tasks such as creating requisitions, hosting sourcing events, authoring new contracts, checking for supplier compliance, managing invoices and payments. It streamlines all your source–to-pay processes and collates all the relevant information in one place to help you make informed decisions. Its powerful functionality is native in the unified platform – spend analytics, savings tracking, sourcing, contract management, supplier management, procure-to-pay – which enables fast information flow, process and work flow. Speed up your procurement operations by automating your source-to-pay workflow processes, right from creating requisitions to sourcing, managing purchase orders, processing invoices and paying your suppliers. From opportunity identification to supplier payment a single system is used, with a personalized view of critical information for each and every type of user.

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- QUALITYLINE'S POWERFUL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BASED SOFTWARE TOOL -

We have become a value added reseller of QualityLine production Technologies, Ltd., a high-tech company that has developed an Artificial Intelligence based software solution that automatically integrates with your worldwide manufacturing data and creates an advanced diagnostics analytics for you. This tool is really different than any others in the market, because it can be implemented very quickly and easily, and will work with any type of equipment and data, data in any format coming from your sensors, saved manufacturing data sources, test stations, manual entry .....etc. No need to change any of your existing equipment to implement this software tool. Besides real time monitoring of key performance parameters, this AI software provides you root cause analytics, provides early warnings and alerts. There is no solution like this in the market. This tool has saved manufacturers plenty of cash reducing rejects, returns, reworks, downtime and gaining customers goodwill. Easy and quick !  To schedule a Discovery Call with us and to find out more about this powerful artıficial intelligence based manufacturing analytics tool:

- Please fill out the downloadable QL Questionnaire from the orange link on the left and return to us by email to projects@ags-engineering.com.

- Have a look at the orange colored downloadable brochure links to get an idea about this powerful tool. QualityLine One Page Summary and QualityLine Summary Brochure

- Also here is a short video that gets to the point:  VIDEO of QUALITYLINE MANUFACTURING ANALYTICS TOOL