Very clear! It’s a certainty that your company will not be successful without a well performing Supply Chain organization.

Reducing your costs on ongoing basis is mainly a matter of expertise, a sense of communication and excellent project management.

Also, streamlining your material flows, optimizing your inventory and reducing your lead times are some examples that are part of the game.

Take some time to address some of the following questions:

• Do you have sufficient capabilities in-house to make "the difference"?

• Are you looking for some kind of permanent guidance or just a one-off support?

• Are you perfectly happy with your current staff and do you trust them to reach higher levels once trained?

• Is a full review and potential re-engineering of your team the preferred option?

• Who will take the lead to assess the training content and provider?

• What would be your expectations and how much are you willing to pay?

• Will everybody be trained or only the "happy few"?

• What mechanism will you set in motion to make sure that everybody learns the story?

• Will you be engaging your own supply chain team only or also other departments?

As the "people’s voice", Human Resources should be the key interface within your company on this topic!

Hereby enough reasons why HR managers should opt for supply chain trainings:

• It will emphasize the importance of supply chain management within your company

• It will allow people to understand their current position on the "maturity ladder" both from a personal as from a business point-of-view

• It will provide all the required methodologies and processes to reduce costs

• It will teach you how to interact with suppliers and internal customers in the best possible way

• It will strengthen the needs to focus strongly on quality

• It will help you to make the bridge to the future thanks to focus on innovation

• It will support you to interact and even challenge your local engineering community

• It will teach you that not only the price counts

• It will learn you all elements of Total Cost of Ownership

• It will give you insights on how to evaluate and audit suppliers

• It will help you to better understand financials and transactions

• It will open up your eyes on the great need for cross-functionality

• It will teach you all about the cultural business aspects of negotiations

• It will learn you how to work with mathematical models to optimize your material flows and inventory levels

• It will teach you the key points of distribution and warehouse management

• It will support you with possible low-cost country sourcing adventures

I just could continue for ages with "It will" sentences but believe me…I will stop right now!

Like for all types of services, the only solution is to get in touch with the right specialists to create consistent value now and for ever … or do you:

• Ask your doctor to check your car?

• Ask your hairdresser the fundamentals of nuclear science?

• Ask your butcher to take care of the garden?

• Ask your nanny all about chemical engineering?

Hopefully you have answered NO to these questions!

And a yes to opt for professional supply chain trainings.