Over recent years, even the most robust global supply chain has faced multiple challenges on an existential level – but there are solutions that can deliver the competitive edge in the new, unstable landscape.
Global issues including COVID lockdowns, semiconductor shortages, workforce shortages and the war in Ukraine have caused major disruption to Australian business’ supply chains.
There have been unprecedented levels of shortage and failure across multiple sectors, resulting in what would previously have been perceived as unacceptable OTIF (on-time-in-full) performance, excessive WIP (work in progress), longer lead times for finished goods and excessive build-up of stock in the supply chain.
According to Unipart Group Australia (UGA) Managing Director Mark Carling, the imperative to keep passengers and freight running is as strong as ever in the Australian rail sector, where the network is a strategic asset that underpins wider economic activity.
“But with pressure on the supply chains that keep trains moving, a laser-focus on asset optimisation and productivity improvement is needed,” he said.
He referred to December’s Market Capacity report from Infrastructure Australia, which highlighted the continuing low productivity across the construction sector, specifically identifying that “…. efforts to drive systematic improvements are hampered by a lack of knowledge sharing and best practice”.
The report makes a number of points, which include:
- Digital – digital transformation will drive productivity and innovation in infrastructure delivery.
- Collaboration – integration across the ecosystem will drive a financially sustainable and high performing infrastructure industry.
- Innovation – innovative, digitally-enabled techniques will enable increased productivity.
“While the challenges are well-known and the solutions have been identified, the shift to the required future state in the rail sector is not an easy one to implement – and the sector needs help to make this fundamental paradigm change,” Carling said.
MAKING THE PARADIGM CHANGE
A key element of making the change is to have a full ‘end-to-end’ understanding of the whole supply chain, and focussing activities initially in the bottleneck areas.
To achieve this, real time ‘end-to-end’ visibility of performance and inventory across the supply chain is required.
“Performance measurements must capture more than just OTIF, providing cost to serve and carbon reporting as standard,” Carling said.
“This holistic data capture enables the identification of risks, measurement of failure rates, observation of trends and provides advanced warning of future risks.”
This is where logistics and supply chains specialist Unipart – working in partnership with customers, suppliers and other logistics partners – builds transformative roadmaps to address high risk factors specific to customer requirements and supply chain design.
Common quick wins typically include sourcing alternative component suppliers, impartially onboarding additional transport providers, setting up localised storage facilities, or innovating to address a labour shortage, but how this applies to each customer is completely unique.
“This can appear to be a daunting task for rail companies where the supply chain stretches far beyond Australian shores; we always recommend taking an incremental approach, starting with diagnostics activities either on discrete areas of concern or looking at the broader supply chain of a business,” Carling said.
“UGA’s expert practitioners have successfully worked with many Australian and global rail customers to leverage Unipart’s 20-year-plus Lean Journey to support and guide customers embarking on a Lean implementation – sharing knowledge, driving innovation and delivering digital solutions in processes by using the Unipart Way.”
The Unipart Way is a philosophy of continuous improvement focused on driving the company to achieve world class standards of quality, delivery, and customer service. The company has developed a range of tools and techniques to create continuous improvements within organisations.
This encompasses creative problem-solving processes, standard work and visual management techniques at the grass-roots level, to policy deployment techniques which ensure that any activity within the company is directed at and aligned with strategy and objectives.
MULTI-SECTOR EXPERIENCE
The Australian rail sector faces particular challenges – and requires a strong local rail background to properly get ‘under the hood’ of the supply chain – but broader experience can also bring fresh perspectives to knowledge sharing to allow the paradigm change needed.
“Unipart has worked with leading names across many sectors including rail, automotive, technology and health, demonstrating we have the operational capabilities, the technology and the characteristics to be a leading supply chain partner,” Carling said.
“We engage positively with colleagues, customers and partners to serve our customers better, in a true partnership.”
For more information visit www.unipart.com.au or contact uga.enquiries@unipart.com
