People in Supply Chain Management

[jgsolo734]

Hello Everyone,

I'm new to Supply Chain Management, I came from Procurement. Just want to know if Supply chain with responsibility covering procurement, importation, production planning, inventory management, hotel and travel agency accreditation, and purchasing (office and marketing supplies) can be manage by only two (2) person?

What is the right no. of people in a supply chain organization? Our company is composed of 150 personnel. Our products are pharmaceutical (7 products with various SKUs and consumer (newly established with 3 SKU). We have 7 product manager handling each product.

Any opinion is highly appreciated. Thank you.

[TopLink]

jgsolo734,

A bit difficult to say without more information, but 2 doesn't sound a lot.

1. Is production in-house or do you manage toll production?
2. 7 products, but how many SKUs?
3. Market? Domestic or export as well?
4. Supply? Imports as well?
5. Distribution? In house or outsourced?
6. Company turnover?
7. Product managers? What do they do?

[jgsolo734]

Originally Posted by TopLink

jgsolo734,

A bit difficult to say without more information, but 2 doesn't sound a lot.

1. Is production in-house or do you manage toll production?
   We manage toll production, currently 3 sub-contractors.
2. 7 products, but how many SKUs?
   All in all, we have 29 SKUs.
3. Market? Domestic or export as well?
   Currently for domestic only.
4. Supply? Imports as well?
   We import from 6 countries (China, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Taiwan)
5. Distribution? In house or outsourced?
   Distribution is currently outsourced, 3 distributors (2-pharma prod., 1-consumer prod.)
6. Company turnover?
   USD1.5M/mo.
7. Product managers? What do they do?
   Each Prod Managers create their own marketing strategies and organize different Events for product promotion, including give-aways and travel incentives for doctors.

Thanks for the support.

[TopLink]

jgsolo734,

Judging by the size of the company, SKU range, degree of outsourcing etc, 2 people may be sufficient. Always hard to judge without actually seeing it of course!

I guess the bottom line is, how are you coping with only 2 staff?

[Neo]

Originally Posted by jgsolo734

Thanks for the support.

jgsolo734 ,

Production and Distributor outsourced but you mentioned you have 150 staff in your company but only two staff in procurement . Balance 148 staff goes to which department .

By the way have you resolve the Import shipment problem mentioned in other thread ( FCL-LCL imports Shipment ) .

[jgsolo734]

Originally Posted by TopLink

jgsolo734,

Judging by the size of the company, SKU range, degree of outsourcing etc, 2 people may be sufficient. Always hard to judge without actually seeing it of course!

I guess the bottom line is, how are you coping with only 2 staff?

Almost always running out of time. I tried to request for additional staff to unload some of the task and concentrate on analysis and process improvement but denied. By the way, when I mentioned 2 staff, that includes myself. Thank you for the inputs.

[jgsolo734]

Originally Posted by Neo

jgsolo734 ,

Production and Distributor outsourced but you mentioned you have 150 staff in your company but only two staff in procurement . Balance 148 staff goes to which department .

5 goes to Acctg & Finance, 2 goes to IT, 2 goes to regulatory, 12 goes to marketing, 8 goes to clinical study,4 goes to HR, 2 goes to runner, 2 goes to promo girls (for consumer prod), 3 goes to secretarial, 2 goes to office warehouse (pick and pack of sampling and promo items), the rest are sales people.

By the way have you resolve the Import shipment problem mentioned in other thread ( FCL-LCL imports Shipment ) .

So far, we haven't encounter any shortage yet, we asked DHL to handle the Custom clearance. All the shipment are complete using the current mode (LCL), however, some few qty. were damaged. We are trying to set a procedure to open the container inside the port, if the authorities agreed, we will try to use FCL again.

Thank you for your support.

[Neo]

Originally Posted by jgsolo734

Almost always running out of time. I tried to request for additional staff to unload some of the task and concentrate on analysis and process improvement but denied. By the way, when I mentioned 2 staff, that includes myself. Thank you for the inputs.

The question is how you request or propose to justify for manpower increase .
The best way to justify the increase is to prepare a process mapping of the areas under your care outlining the activities involve and the time required to perform each activity daily - weekly - monthly .

[Starbucks Junkie]

Originally Posted by Neo

The question is how you request or propose to justify for manpower increase .
The best way to justify the increase is to prepare a process mapping of the areas under your care outlining the activities involve and the time required to perform each activity daily - weekly - monthly .

JGsolo,

The cross functional process flow spreadsheet that I posted on another thread will help you to achieve this.

You can map activities across functions and include value added and none value added times to each process, this way at the end of the map the spreadsheet highlights how much time in your process is actually adding value and how much is not.

You should then target the areas not adding value to see if you can eliminate them from the process, thus you may not need to increase head count as you would be working a leaner smarter process.

Give it a go, if you need any help, you have my email address just ask.

SJ

[jgsolo734]

Originally Posted by Neo

The question is how you request or propose to justify for manpower increase .
The best way to justify the increase is to prepare a process mapping of the areas under your care outlining the activities involve and the time required to perform each activity daily - weekly - monthly .

Thanks Neo, I'll take note of that.