RAW MATERIAL SUPPLY CHAIN CHALLENGES AND QUALITY CONTROL: HOW TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM.

The current raw material supply chain dynamics with spiraling increases in prices and its attendant negative impact on availability is having a huge toll on quality of control of raw materials. Quality control of raw materials is a crucial parameter to meet manufacturing standards and supply customers with safe and reliable products. How to manage the complexity nowadays when raw materials are scarce and expensive and guarantee, at the same time, high levels of quality is a burning issue worth discussing. If raw materials become difficult to acquire, market forces may shift demand to other goods and therefore other supply chains.

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Quality is a key competitive driver in market share growth for products. It is a core metric that should be tracked in any manufacturing process. Testing raw materials is the first essential step in quality control in the food manufacturing sector. As it is necessary to ensure that the final product released on the market is safe and effective, tests are usually conducted and starting materials are released only once their identity, purity and quality are proven by the quality inspection team.

However, with the crisis in supply chains, entrance quality control for raw materials is being put under pressure. Supply chain planning teams are pushed to effectively predict demand, ensure supply accuracy, and successfully coordinate the flow of goods into customers’ hands-on time.

But how quality can be assured in such an uncertain economic environment??How are manufacturing organizations navigating through the risks inherent in the current raw material supply chain crisis?

I have highlighted key approaches to use:

1.Develop new valuable suppliers:

In order to face the challenges encountered in the supply chain nowadays all over the world, it is crucial to build a backup network of suppliers, able to provide the raw material when the main suppliers can’t.?However, a different elemental composition of raw material can affect the chemical resistance, shelf-life, hardness, elasticity, etc. of the final product, resulting in an unpleasant end-user experience.Therefore, it is important that a robust supplier development programme for new raw material vendor be out in place. I have shared my model for supplier development in figure 1.

2. Improve the capability of existing suppliers:

It is important to improve the capability of existing suppliers to expand sourcing options. This has been explained in my own supplier quality management model in figure 1which has proven to be very effective based on my experiences working in different organisations in my career thus far.

3.Reformulation of products with different ingredients or existing ingredients.

If the price of a raw material in a product recipe is continuously increasing, it would have a negative impact on the profit margin for the product which of course renders the product commercially non-viable. It is recommended that alternative raw materials serving the same purpose in the same product be developed. Alternatively, the inclusion rate of one or more of the raw materials in the recipe of the product be reduced but without any deviation in the product quality profile from the consumers’ perspective. In both cases explained, it is essential for R&D laboratories to find instruments and methods to assess the impact of product stability on new formulations.?

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