Thinking Like A Leader – Why Reorder Points Are So Important?

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oi-Oneindia Staff

Global leader in Supply Chain and logistics expert Mandeep Singh, talked us through his career and the valleys that shaped his instinct on highly statistical tools.

What kind of companies have you worked with in the past?

APAC market was my first lead in the door of the supply chain and there are several differences in operational understanding of processes. My first month with Kawaljeet, CEO at Jeet Builders dug really deep into leveraging the company’s financial stability and resources.

It was a quick turnaround where I led charge on multiple projects like creating processes to tackle monopolized vendor relations, creating a structure for JIT (Just-In-Time) approach which further improved the inventory size and cash flow.

Did problems like this follow you in different roles?

Similar, yes. But most companies have a tailored approach to their operations and when I worked with Crow Works, my approaches took a 360 very soon. They relied on multiple vendors, so that required a fair bit of understanding of inventory management. Which, in itself, is a hugely important topic.

I was determined to tackle the complexity involved and I was successful too. Alongside, I was accelerating my vendor negotiation techniques and managed to reduce the minimum order quantities as a result. Again, helping strengthen the cash flow!

How did you manage to develop intricate solutions for these complex issues?

A good leader can eye the target while myopically identifying issues along the way. In my years of experience, I have realized financial stability is everything for a company dealing with supply chain as a primary function in the day-to-day. My first order of business has always been to weed out bad practices and then go after the vendors!

But seriously, it’s very important for upper-management to zero in on basic issues like over or under-supplied inventory, delayed payments to vendors, accrued sundries, etc. and then work backwards to find the solution.
Most of the time, it can be done by calibrating your reorder points to justify the business objectives in the short-term but more importantly in the long-term.

It’s a highly sophisticated approach and takes months to get right and even longer to master; But it must be done to succeed in other functions.

Did you ever face challenges in this approach?

COVID-19 presented a lot of challenges, as I’m sure it did for everyone. My work with Anderson-Negele (part of Fortive) was during this period. As I worked on my strategy, everything was falling into place but it took much longer. I talked to vendors across the globe everyday and everyday presented a new challenge crossing with socio-economic layers. And working remotely on Kanban resizing project was the single hardest thing I had to do in my career. But ultimately, it was the precise work of these efforts and reorder point work that helped us sail the ship during these years.

What are you tackling now?

I have been a part of leadership at RPUI for almost two years now and it has been a great learning experience. Working on creating a new tech stack for the supply chain is my pivotal challenge. I’ll be sure to return for more on how it turns out!