How long is your supply chain? How many contacts do you manage? According to a recent study, only 6% of companies feel they have full visibility over their supply chain, but the same survey revealed that 57% of companies believe that managing their supply chain well gives them a competitive advantage.
That is a glaring gap between the belief that supply chain management is important and actually having a good grasp on their chain.
One avenue towards stricter supply chain management is through consolidation. By removing unneeded contacts from your supply chain, you can improve supplier relations, increase purchasing power, and so much more.
As sealing solutions experts, we are going to take a look at a few ways consolidating your rubber and plastic supplier can positively impact your business. This portion of the supply chain can often become convoluted and stretched between multiple vendors when it is incredibly beneficial to manufacturers to consolidate to one supplier.
Increased Purchasing Power
Your dollar goes a lot further when you occupy a more substantial share with one vendor versus smaller shares with many vendors. When you are spending more and have a larger account, this can result in more purchasing power. This is especially true in rubber and plastic sealing solutions. Often, single rubber and plastic solutions can make up a small portion of a project’s budget, but when you look at your needs comprehensively that could potentially be covered by one vendor, it adds up. If you translate those smaller accounts into one larger one, you not only make your life easier, but you also increase your purchasing power by operating at scale.
Minimized Risk
It could be argued that consolidating suppliers increases risk, as you put more needs into one vendor’s hand versus diversifying your supply chain; however, the pros for risk mitigation outweigh that potential risk.
Consolidating your supply chain reduces your total number of contact points while increasing your visibility. By reducing your contacts, you limit the potential for larger ramifications if something were to go wrong in their supply chain while improving your communication capacity by dealing with fewer companies and people. Meanwhile, you are also increasing visibility of your distributors and supply chain in general. This is a primary step in top-notch quality management.
Streamlined Process
By consolidating your supply chain, you can reduce redundancy, improve efficiency, and increase productivity. A single-source supplier has a greater vantage point of your business’s needs and product usage, so they can help you optimize and streamline efficiently (bonus: this is another way you can mitigate risk).
Reduced Costs
Complexity is costly. Having a large number of vendors means spending more time in meetings, on the phone, fielding emails, navigating contracts, doing paperwork, and managing contacts. This is costing you time and potentially money, while increasing risks in your supply chain management.
For those in the industrial space, the average supply chain cost is around 13.2% of their profits, but companies that optimize their supply chains have decreased that number to 7.9%, saving them 40% on their supply chain.
How Marco Rubber Makes It Easy to Consolidate Your Sealing Needs
When it comes to the small but essential sealing components in your designs, choosing your vendor is critical, but we don’t think it should be difficult. Working with the right vendor can help you optimize your logistics strategy while improving your bottom line and decreasing your stress.
Here at Marco Rubber, we make it simple for you to get what you need, access our experts, and consolidate your sealing and polymer needs. In 2023, we added a slew of new solutions to our repertoire. We have also added a number of experts on new and complex solutions to our team.
To name a few highlights from the year, we have:
- Expanded offerings in our high performance FFKM Markez® O-rings line.
- Added a more expansive vee packing line.
- Developed new varieties and options for metal detectable o-rings.
- Introduced a new line of sanitary gaskets and other sealing solutions for breweries.
- Integrated new flexible graphite product options.
- Implemented an On Time In Full (OTIF) program to ensure our customers have ready access to solutions.
As we enter 2024, we are reaffirming our commitment to expansion and endeavoring to find new ways to serve our customers and help them consolidate their sealing needs.
Conclusion
Rounding out the year, the GEP Global Supply Chain Index indicates that, globally, the economy is still very questionable moving into the new year. While we might see some stabilization in the United States, Europe’s economy is still showing signs of volatility.
In other words, we need to stay prepared for another year of unpredictability.
One way you can strive towards stability and mitigate risk is through consolidating your vendors, especially for the smaller spend items and solutions within your design.
Throughout the last few volatile years, Marco Rubber has still expanded and provided stability for our clients. We have kept lead times short, continued to innovate, and brought access to new solutions to our customers. If you are looking for stability, look towards Marco Rubber.
Contact us today to see just how we could revolutionize solutions for your sealing needs.