Flow-First Health Check

Gain critical insight into your supply chain

Supply chain directors and managers are under constant pressure to drive greater efficiencies, whether to reduce costs, meet customer demands, or ensure regulatory compliance. But in a complex world where operations seem to be getting by, where do you begin?

The OP2MA Flow-First 'health check' helps businesses avoid common cost-cutting pitfalls—such as reducing inventory to save money, only to risk stockouts and lost customers.

This doesn’t mean such measures should never be taken, but lasting efficiencies come from understanding the fundamentals of supply chain systems.

With an OP2MA 'health check', we take a Flow-First approach to uncover new efficiency opportunities—without unintended disruptions.

Why undertake an OP2MA Flow-First 'health check'?

For a fixed investment cost (dependent on the size and complexity of your supply chain and identified up front), you will gain:

Deliverables

Outcomes

Definition of the main supply chain flows for the business (this will form the scope of the initial engagement) Includes assessment of any items that are hard to source and is not purely about largest volume supply lines.

Gain clarity on critical flows that also supports understanding of risk and vulnerability.

Demand variability:

- Assessing end customer demand – profile and influencing factors

- Propagation of the demand signal in the supply chain – profile of replenishment, production, and/or supply order patterns

Understand demand and whether variability is natural or induced (e.g trading terms encouraging bulk ordering, promotional activities).

Highlight the potential cost impact of siloed practices across the supply chain (an area often poorly understood with trade-offs that are not quantified).

Highlight costs drivers and identify key trade-offs.

Supply variability:

- Performance of supply chain – on time, in full, to quality

Qualify critical supplier performance.

Indicates how current ways of working are impacting that performance.

Highlight significant opportunities to improve collaboration.

Buffer mapping:

- Identification and qualification of the key buffers operating in the current supply chain: inventory, capacity, and time

Identify the core elements that drive cost and capital requirements for the business and extended supply chain.

Highlights significant opportunities for improvement: reduce lead times (improve service), reduce inventory (reduce working capital), improve asset utilisation (higher productivity, better service)

Flow-First call-outs:

- Key observations on current supply chain operations and performance. Includes charts and graphics that illustrate quantified measures such as variability.

- Opportunities to improve flow and performance

- Issues that impede flow and detract from outcomes

Provides the core components for a supply chain transformation.

Coherent analysis that illustrates the fundamental underpinning for such a plan and gives confidence that outcomes can be predicted.

The Process

Step 1: Complete the form below to register your interest

Step 2: One of our supply chain experts will arrange an initial free exploratory discussion to discuss your supply chain and identify the scope required.

Step 3: We will prepare a short project brief including timescales and a fixed investment cost for our services.

Step 4: We will review with you the outcomes from the project and advise on opportunities to transform operational and financial performance.

Ready to get started?

"OP2MA played a crucial role in responding to the immediate challenges brought on by the Covid pandemic and the subsequent reshaping of our operations and depot network in order to deliver material cost savings for the long-term."

Andrew Hogley

CEO

British Wool