Reduce Inventory

Challenges to Reduce Inventory for Brand Owners and Contract Manufacturers

Inventory is just a cost until it is sold or used. Excess idle inventory and safety stock sitting around, be it raw materials, WIP or finished goods, just adds unnecessary financial overhead to all parties. So, there is a relentless drive to reduce inventory along the entire manufacturing environment and supply chain. Yet, too lean inventory levels invite lost business, service penalties and expediting costs.

Reducing inventory to optimum levels across a supply network that includes significant levels of contract manufacturing and external supply operations requires tackling even greater complexity. Contract manufacturers need materials (API, chemicals, components, packaging) on hand and ready to execute production orders yet prefer these materials arrive just-in-time for production start. This means coordinating material deliveries from dozens of suppliers and reacting quickly when schedules aren’t met. The outsourced production process can be less predictable than desired, increasing the need to request production runs more frequently or of greater size to ensure adequate levels of safety stock. Customer demand is variable and available contract production capacity has limited visibility so inventory stockpiles are kept to ensure maximum product availability. In the end, lack of precise data and end-to-end visibility all conspire to fight inventory and lean manufacturing programs.

How TraceLink can help Brand Owners and Contract Manufacturers to Reduce Inventory

• Gain visibility into current inventory and safety stock levels across external supply. Improve visibility into raw material and finished goods inventories on a per-partner or cross-partner basis. Drive increased awareness of current production status and potential production delays identify and mitigate impacts on delivery schedules.
• Drive Right-First-Time predictability and scalability of outsourced manufacturing production. Leverage integrated cross-partner and cross-site visibility into production status to improve decision-making, enhance information sharing between internal and external work teams, and empower contract partners to help drive process improvements through improved sharing of forecasts, process artifacts and milestones.
• Speed product delivery and overall agility in responding to customer demand. Reduce purchase order negotiation time. Eliminate manufacturing process delays due to coordination, material receipt and process review issues. Eliminate manual labor in production status and operational reporting. Quickly respond to customer forecast changes and production order modifications.

Next steps

• Try It Yourself.  In minutes, launch a no obligation FREE TRIAL of our Predictable Supply Suite. Create your own Process Link collaborative team workspace, invite and quickly connect to virtual team members, then experience a new world of production visibility and tracking across your contract manufacturing operations!
• Demo Production Tracking.  Request a guided PERSONAL DEMO of our Production Tracking and ProcessLink solutions. On your schedule, one of our team members will take you through our solution.

Explore More

• Discover Production Tracking.  Find out how the TraceLink Production Tracking solution can give you visibility and control throughout the entire contract manufacturing lifecycle. Go Production Tracking
• Experience ProcessLink.  Review TraceLink's innovative approach to connecting you and your internal contract manufacturing teams to your partners both fast and flexibly. Go ProcessLink