<h5>The Economic Times, August 29, 2014</h5>It is a widely held belief among organisations that forging long-term relationships with dedicated vendors is crucial for supply chain excellence. Industries like the auto sector have understood this better than others. Most auto <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.vectorconsulting.in/en/research-and-publication/articles/an-sos-for-the-oems/">OEMs</a> have dedicated vendor setups near their own setups in the interest of just-in-time supply. Their pricing arrangement is period-based rather than transaction-based allowing for seamless inventory movement. Many consumer goods and equipment manufacturing companies have adopted similar models, more out of the need to outsource manufacturing content and reduce in-house labour than for any other reason. The arrangement appears like a collaborative, interdependent partnership, where each party focuses on its core competency. When overall economic growth is strong, and everyone in the chain benefits financially, the model epitomises successful win-win partnerships. However, it is in the recession years, when sales, profits, and working capital come under pressure, that cracks develop in the relationships. During 2008 to 2013, the Indian economy experienced two slowdown phases. Sectors such as engineering, auto and consumer goods experienced sales pressure. Profits dipped, and working capital rose. The resultant impact has been a shift of focus in management from ‘growth ideas’ to ‘reductionist ideas’. Initiatives for reducing working capital, cutting material costs, and fixed costs were dominating boardroom discussions. With a crisis-like situation looming in many companies, these initiatives faced significant time pressure to yield results. With pressure comes the need to resort to harsh measures that will give immediate results. These are usually imposed on the weaker entity in the chain – the ‘partner’ suppliers.<figure class="image"><img style="aspect-ratio:4000/2898;" src="https://web-assets.vectorconsulting.in/storage/editor_uploads//rally-your-allies_1758278144.jpg" width="4000" height="2898"></figure><h5>Burden sharing</h5>When pricing to end customers is under pressure, organisations typically look at vendors to support them in retaining margins. Buyers in the organisations are given aggressive targets; they are directed to re-negotiate pricing terms with the vendors. Large organisations even hire outside expertise to identify and, at times, directly negotiate with vendors using templates of ‘correct’ costing. With capacities going un-utilised, the overall recessionary mood creates an atmosphere of desperation. In these conditions, there is an abundance of new players willing to price products using marginal costing principles to gain entry to established vendor networks. Power relationships are manipulated to force vendors to drop prices. Alternatively, new and cheaper vendors are added to the network to create ‘competition’. <h5>Borrow from buddies</h5>Recessions typically also bring along a liquidity crisis. Receivables not only increase over time but also become more difficult to collect. Organisations find themselves under pressure to deploy more capital to manage a much lower volume of sales than they did during other times. Many people fail into the mode of using vendors’ cash to improve their conditions. Short-term tactics like:<ul style="list-style-type:disc;"><li>Ad hoc delays in vendors’ payments.</li><li>Formal increase in payable periods.</li><li>Delayed off-take of material made by vendors, even after it is made as per confirmed schedules.</li></ul> Both approaches of pushing ‘capital’ and ‘costs’ back to vendors are myopic and have disruptive ramifications for organisations, not only in the long-term but also in the short-term. Short-term impact: When smaller, dedicated vendors are not paid on time in recession periods, they are pushed into a bigger crisis than the organisations they service. Stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place, they take desperate actions to protect themselves. Many cut down on raw inventory or prune labour capacity.  These indirectly lead to disruptions in supplies. The effects of these measures would be clearly seen if one were to do an analysis of parts availability at the auto OEMs, the entities that are heavily reliant on “partner” vendors. With excess capacity becoming available at the vendors’, one would expect parts supplies to improve. However, at most OEMs, parts availability takes a hit. The everyday search for parts, which is both manic and frequent rescheduling, only takes a turn for the worse.  The few sales orders that trickle in are cancelled, or their fulfilment is delayed. OEMs that depend on a large number of vendors to bring in parts for assemblies suffer more when cash flow issues cripple the production of even a handful of vendors. A high level of mismatched inventory almost nullifies the gain in the payables period derived from delayed payment to vendors. Long-term impact: When the economy recovers and there is a sudden hunger for extra capacity, vendors try to restore capacities. This capacity enhancement comes with a built-in lead-time, resulting in a disruptive supply chain and potential sales loss for the parent organisation in the transition period. Many vendors also use the opportunity to price the product higher to account for the increased payable period of the organisation. When organisations add new vendors to bring about ‘competition’ amongst existing vendors, ‘partner’ vendors, particularly those with large capital investments, are forced to look for new avenues to fill up capacity. Their ‘dedication’ weakens, causing day-to-day conflicts in scheduling, which in turn affects deliveries to the main organisation when business starts reviving. The experience of a downturn also makes vendors wary of adding dedicated capacities to the organisation. Thus begins a never-ending search for an ‘ideal’ partner. The ‘rationalised’ vendor base expands. More vendors mean more effort for coordination. Eventually, organisations realise the need to consolidate their vendor base. Many organisations switch between paradigms moving from vendors for increased competition to fewer vendors for smoother coordination. <h5>Deciphering the inherent win-win</h5>India’s long-term growth story is still intact. The periods of economic slowdown will always be short, thanks to the increasing number of prosperous middle-class Indians. Hence, organisations can create a sustainable supply chain for the long-term only if they avoid disastrous shortcuts during periods of downturn. Easing the pressure on cash and profits, however, is a genuine challenge. Not many organisations will be able to compromise short-term goals for long-term good. The only way out is to deal with short-term challenges without giving up on long-term goals. This is possible if organisations look at vendor supply chains and their internal operations holistically to release the hidden value both in terms of cash and margins. <h5>Cash is locked in inventory flows in the entire chain</h5>Companies review the inventory MIS at the month-end, quarter-end, or year-end to determine the value locked. They shouldn’t. To get the real picture, they should be looking at daily inventory. Many discrete manufacturing companies have a skewed inventory profile in raw materials, WIP and finished goods. The profile peaks as inventory balloons towards the middle of the month and falls with the flush out at the end of the month. Working capital deployed in the business is determined by the peak rather than the month-end numbers reported in the monthly MIS. This way of working creates wide variability in manufacturing lead time, which is also one of the main guzzlers of working capital. This way of working also locks up the working capital of partner vendors. <h5>Cash locked in receivables in entire chain</h5>To understand the compulsion to increase the payable period of vendors, it is essential to know how the pressure of working capital builds for organisations. For many equipment manufacturing companies engaged in assembly and erection at the site, the receivables do not exactly reflect the collectable amount. Parts supply enables companies to manage their turnover and receivables, but when payment terms are tied to erections and commissioning, the large time gap between supplier payment and actual collections eats up working capital. The gap widens in a downturn as companies try to bill out of sequence to make up for sales. The conflict between controlling receivables and pursuing turnover growth at the same time is not only seen in the case of custom-made equipment but also in standard products sold through dealer networks. During a downturn, push sales lead to a ballooning of inventory and then to a cash flow crisis for dealers. In both types of industries, the inability to manage receivables and inflated working capital forces organisations to resort to delayed payments to vendor partners. <h5>Margins are locked in capacity utilisation in the entire chain</h5>In supply chains, where inventory flow is skewed, the capacity deployed for managing growth is always to manage the peak, leaving pockets of capacity wasted. This wastage is never revealed in the output figures reported in the monthly MIS. The capacity wastages (hidden) find their way into the product pricing by vendors. (The only way to identify this wastage is to check the difference between the touch time of an operation in a critical work centre and compare it with the total available time for a period). <h5>The way out</h5>Organisations stand to gain both in the short term and in the long term if they focus on accelerating inventory flow while minimising the variability of flow in the entire supply chain. The epidemic of month-end, quarter-end, and year-end skew in many organisations points not just towards a persistent, unresolved problem of many decades but also to the enormity of the problem in the entire industry. Investment in enterprise IT tools in the last few decades has not changed this reality for many organisations. It is time for a close look at the conceptual framework of existing supply chain practices. <h5>Relook at the theory</h5>The wave of inventory is typically due to the concept of planning horizons or planning cycles. At the end of these, one needs to make a correction for the errors in the past planning cycle and re-plan for the future, incorporating both mistakes of the past and requirements of the future. The longer the planning cycle, the longer the time taken to correct  errors and the bigger the correction cycle, therefore, the wave of inventory movement and capacity utilisation. Every supply chain faces the twin challenge of making inventory movement decisions that maximise asset utilisation and fulfil the entire demand. Widely used supply chain practices – both for standard and nonstandard products – make one or both of the following assumptions about reality to make such decisions.<ul style="list-style-type:disc;"><li>With more information, one can predict the demand for the future with reasonable accuracy.</li><li>With more information, one can calculate the manufacturing capacity precisely. </li></ul> Both these assumptions are right if one wants to explain variations in hindsight. For example, everyone seems to know the exact (and a very obvious reason) why actual sales deviated from sales forecasts. However, they fail to predict the future, particularly close to economic downturns and upturns. A plethora of variables impact demand; one can never be sure when a variable’s impact is noise and when an impact is a signal (worth a listen). As a result, most forecasting tools fail the retrospective test – using past data to predict the immediate past. Hence, using forecasting data to create and move inventory in the supply chain invariably leads to surplus and shortages. At the same time, it creates waves of capacity utilisation. The waves are gigantic during downturns as it takes time for entities to adjust to real demand. Similarly, manufacturing planning techniques assume that it is possible to define capacity for maximum utilisation. However, varying product mixes and uncertainties make it nearly impossible to determine the exact capacity required for any point in time. As a result, any upfront inventory creation decision results in periods of overload and underload. This approach of schedule-based planning and associated errors leads to inventory pile-ups at vendors. It is not uncommon to find vendors complaining about high finished goods inventory that has not been picked up by the leading organisation, even though the goods were produced exactly as per schedule. Moving away from a push system of upfront scheduling of capacity and predicting demand for a month or a week to a daily pull system in the entire chain, including suppliers, operations, and customers, not only reduces inventory in the chain but also uncovers excess capacity. Pull systems depend on initiating the movement of inventory based on the rate of completions while maintaining a constant inventory profile in operations or distribution. This eliminates the need to determine accurate capacity or demand for the future. The reduction in inventory across the entire chain takes away the pressure of tampering with vendors’ payables. At the same time, when capacity usage improves, the entire gross contribution adds to the bottom line of vendors, creating an environment where gains can be shared with the organisation, particularly in cases where the main organisation takes the initiative and makes the special effort to streamline flow in the entire chain. The released cash and capacity can be utilised to build strategic inventory or capacity buffers offering guaranteed and reduced lead times in the market to secure more orders during a downturn. The suggested approach provides a competitive edge to an organisation, more so because it flies in the face of typical approaches adopted in the downturn.

Key Takeaways

This article explores challenges in the intricate dance of supply chain partnerships. Advocating a holistic approach, it emphasizes unlocking the hidden value in cash, margins, and capacity through accelerated inventory flow for sustained long-term growth.

Rally with your allies

<h5>The Economic Times, August 29, 2014</h5>It is a widely held belief among organisations that forging long-term relationships with dedicated vendors is crucial for supply chain excellence. Industries like the auto sector have understood this better than others. Most auto <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.vectorconsulting.in/en/research-and-publication/articles/an-sos-for-the-oems/">OEMs</a> have dedicated vendor setups near their own setups in the interest of just-in-time supply. Their pricing arrangement is period-based rather than transaction-based allowing for seamless inventory movement. Many consumer goods and equipment manufacturing companies have adopted similar models, more out of the need to outsource manufacturing content and reduce in-house labour than for any other reason. The arrangement appears like a collaborative, interdependent partnership, where each party focuses on its core competency. When overall economic growth is strong, and everyone in the chain benefits financially, the model epitomises successful win-win partnerships. However, it is in the recession years, when sales, profits, and working capital come under pressure, that cracks develop in the relationships. During 2008 to 2013, the Indian economy experienced two slowdown phases. Sectors such as engineering, auto and consumer goods experienced sales pressure. Profits dipped, and working capital rose. The resultant impact has been a shift of focus in management from ‘growth ideas’ to ‘reductionist ideas’. Initiatives for reducing working capital, cutting material costs, and fixed costs were dominating boardroom discussions. With a crisis-like situation looming in many companies, these initiatives faced significant time pressure to yield results. With pressure comes the need to resort to harsh measures that will give immediate results. These are usually imposed on the weaker entity in the chain – the ‘partner’ suppliers.<figure class="image"><img style="aspect-ratio:4000/2898;" src="https://web-assets.vectorconsulting.in/storage/editor_uploads//rally-your-allies_1758278125.jpg" width="4000" height="2898"></figure><h5>Burden sharing</h5>When pricing to end customers is under pressure, organisations typically look at vendors to support them in retaining margins. Buyers in the organisations are given aggressive targets; they are directed to re-negotiate pricing terms with the vendors. Large organisations even hire outside expertise to identify and, at times, directly negotiate with vendors using templates of ‘correct’ costing. With capacities going un-utilised, the overall recessionary mood creates an atmosphere of desperation. In these conditions, there is an abundance of new players willing to price products using marginal costing principles to gain entry to established vendor networks. Power relationships are manipulated to force vendors to drop prices. Alternatively, new and cheaper vendors are added to the network to create ‘competition’. <h5>Borrow from buddies</h5>Recessions typically also bring along a liquidity crisis. Receivables not only increase over time but also become more difficult to collect. Organisations find themselves under pressure to deploy more capital to manage a much lower volume of sales than they did during other times. Many people fail into the mode of using vendors’ cash to improve their conditions. Short-term tactics like:<ul style="list-style-type:disc;"><li>Ad hoc delays in vendors’ payments.</li><li>Formal increase in payable periods.</li><li>Delayed off-take of material made by vendors, even after it is made as per confirmed schedules.</li></ul> Both approaches of pushing ‘capital’ and ‘costs’ back to vendors are myopic and have disruptive ramifications for organisations, not only in the long-term but also in the short-term. Short-term impact: When smaller, dedicated vendors are not paid on time in recession periods, they are pushed into a bigger crisis than the organisations they service. Stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place, they take desperate actions to protect themselves. Many cut down on raw inventory or prune labour capacity.  These indirectly lead to disruptions in supplies. The effects of these measures would be clearly seen if one were to do an analysis of parts availability at the auto OEMs, the entities that are heavily reliant on “partner” vendors. With excess capacity becoming available at the vendors’, one would expect parts supplies to improve. However, at most OEMs, parts availability takes a hit. The everyday search for parts, which is both manic and frequent rescheduling, only takes a turn for the worse.  The few sales orders that trickle in are cancelled, or their fulfilment is delayed. OEMs that depend on a large number of vendors to bring in parts for assemblies suffer more when cash flow issues cripple the production of even a handful of vendors. A high level of mismatched inventory almost nullifies the gain in the payables period derived from delayed payment to vendors. Long-term impact: When the economy recovers and there is a sudden hunger for extra capacity, vendors try to restore capacities. This capacity enhancement comes with a built-in lead-time, resulting in a disruptive supply chain and potential sales loss for the parent organisation in the transition period. Many vendors also use the opportunity to price the product higher to account for the increased payable period of the organisation. When organisations add new vendors to bring about ‘competition’ amongst existing vendors, ‘partner’ vendors, particularly those with large capital investments, are forced to look for new avenues to fill up capacity. Their ‘dedication’ weakens, causing day-to-day conflicts in scheduling, which in turn affects deliveries to the main organisation when business starts reviving. The experience of a downturn also makes vendors wary of adding dedicated capacities to the organisation. Thus begins a never-ending search for an ‘ideal’ partner. The ‘rationalised’ vendor base expands. More vendors mean more effort for coordination. Eventually, organisations realise the need to consolidate their vendor base. Many organisations switch between paradigms moving from vendors for increased competition to fewer vendors for smoother coordination. <h5>Deciphering the inherent win-win</h5>India’s long-term growth story is still intact. The periods of economic slowdown will always be short, thanks to the increasing number of prosperous middle-class Indians. Hence, organisations can create a sustainable supply chain for the long-term only if they avoid disastrous shortcuts during periods of downturn. Easing the pressure on cash and profits, however, is a genuine challenge. Not many organisations will be able to compromise short-term goals for long-term good. The only way out is to deal with short-term challenges without giving up on long-term goals. This is possible if organisations look at vendor supply chains and their internal operations holistically to release the hidden value both in terms of cash and margins. <h5>Cash is locked in inventory flows in the entire chain</h5>Companies review the inventory MIS at the month-end, quarter-end, or year-end to determine the value locked. They shouldn’t. To get the real picture, they should be looking at daily inventory. Many discrete manufacturing companies have a skewed inventory profile in raw materials, WIP and finished goods. The profile peaks as inventory balloons towards the middle of the month and falls with the flush out at the end of the month. Working capital deployed in the business is determined by the peak rather than the month-end numbers reported in the monthly MIS. This way of working creates wide variability in manufacturing lead time, which is also one of the main guzzlers of working capital. This way of working also locks up the working capital of partner vendors. <h5>Cash locked in receivables in entire chain</h5>To understand the compulsion to increase the payable period of vendors, it is essential to know how the pressure of working capital builds for organisations. For many equipment manufacturing companies engaged in assembly and erection at the site, the receivables do not exactly reflect the collectable amount. Parts supply enables companies to manage their turnover and receivables, but when payment terms are tied to erections and commissioning, the large time gap between supplier payment and actual collections eats up working capital. The gap widens in a downturn as companies try to bill out of sequence to make up for sales. The conflict between controlling receivables and pursuing turnover growth at the same time is not only seen in the case of custom-made equipment but also in standard products sold through dealer networks. During a downturn, push sales lead to a ballooning of inventory and then to a cash flow crisis for dealers. In both types of industries, the inability to manage receivables and inflated working capital forces organisations to resort to delayed payments to vendor partners. <h5>Margins are locked in capacity utilisation in the entire chain</h5>In supply chains, where inventory flow is skewed, the capacity deployed for managing growth is always to manage the peak, leaving pockets of capacity wasted. This wastage is never revealed in the output figures reported in the monthly MIS. The capacity wastages (hidden) find their way into the product pricing by vendors. (The only way to identify this wastage is to check the difference between the touch time of an operation in a critical work centre and compare it with the total available time for a period). <h5>The way out</h5>Organisations stand to gain both in the short term and in the long term if they focus on accelerating inventory flow while minimising the variability of flow in the entire supply chain. The epidemic of month-end, quarter-end, and year-end skew in many organisations points not just towards a persistent, unresolved problem of many decades but also to the enormity of the problem in the entire industry. Investment in enterprise IT tools in the last few decades has not changed this reality for many organisations. It is time for a close look at the conceptual framework of existing supply chain practices. <h5>Relook at the theory</h5>The wave of inventory is typically due to the concept of planning horizons or planning cycles. At the end of these, one needs to make a correction for the errors in the past planning cycle and re-plan for the future, incorporating both mistakes of the past and requirements of the future. The longer the planning cycle, the longer the time taken to correct  errors and the bigger the correction cycle, therefore, the wave of inventory movement and capacity utilisation. Every supply chain faces the twin challenge of making inventory movement decisions that maximise asset utilisation and fulfil the entire demand. Widely used supply chain practices – both for standard and nonstandard products – make one or both of the following assumptions about reality to make such decisions.<ul style="list-style-type:disc;"><li>With more information, one can predict the demand for the future with reasonable accuracy.</li><li>With more information, one can calculate the manufacturing capacity precisely. </li></ul> Both these assumptions are right if one wants to explain variations in hindsight. For example, everyone seems to know the exact (and a very obvious reason) why actual sales deviated from sales forecasts. However, they fail to predict the future, particularly close to economic downturns and upturns. A plethora of variables impact demand; one can never be sure when a variable’s impact is noise and when an impact is a signal (worth a listen). As a result, most forecasting tools fail the retrospective test – using past data to predict the immediate past. Hence, using forecasting data to create and move inventory in the supply chain invariably leads to surplus and shortages. At the same time, it creates waves of capacity utilisation. The waves are gigantic during downturns as it takes time for entities to adjust to real demand. Similarly, manufacturing planning techniques assume that it is possible to define capacity for maximum utilisation. However, varying product mixes and uncertainties make it nearly impossible to determine the exact capacity required for any point in time. As a result, any upfront inventory creation decision results in periods of overload and underload. This approach of schedule-based planning and associated errors leads to inventory pile-ups at vendors. It is not uncommon to find vendors complaining about high finished goods inventory that has not been picked up by the leading organisation, even though the goods were produced exactly as per schedule. Moving away from a push system of upfront scheduling of capacity and predicting demand for a month or a week to a daily pull system in the entire chain, including suppliers, operations, and customers, not only reduces inventory in the chain but also uncovers excess capacity. Pull systems depend on initiating the movement of inventory based on the rate of completions while maintaining a constant inventory profile in operations or distribution. This eliminates the need to determine accurate capacity or demand for the future. The reduction in inventory across the entire chain takes away the pressure of tampering with vendors’ payables. At the same time, when capacity usage improves, the entire gross contribution adds to the bottom line of vendors, creating an environment where gains can be shared with the organisation, particularly in cases where the main organisation takes the initiative and makes the special effort to streamline flow in the entire chain. The released cash and capacity can be utilised to build strategic inventory or capacity buffers offering guaranteed and reduced lead times in the market to secure more orders during a downturn. The suggested approach provides a competitive edge to an organisation, more so because it flies in the face of typical approaches adopted in the downturn.

The article examines vendor partnerships in supply chains, especially during economic downturns and proposes strategic solutions. Problem: Economic downturns significantly strain vendor relationships through delayed payments, aggressive cost-cutting measures, and the expansion of the vendor base to drive down prices. These practices destabilise supply chains, weaken partnerships, and lead to inefficiencies, capacity losses, and missed recovery opportunities. Solution: The drive for cost reduction is unavoidable. However, a more practical approach lies in vendor consolidation and a pull-based supply chain system that provides raw material (RM) buffer stock visibility to the vendor base. This strategy enables vendors to replenish efficiently while optimising their capacity and managing working capital more effectively, fostering shared benefits for all stakeholders. Benefits: Improved cash flow, reduced inventory, stronger vendor trust, better operational efficiency, faster lead times, and a stronger competitive position in both downturns and recoveries.

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<h4>Rally with your allies</h4>

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