Three keys to helping small and medium-sized industrial distributors break through scale constraints and ensure operational continuity

At a time when manufacturers are facing tremendous pressure to increase production capacity and output, industrial distributors may experience explosive growth in business demand. However, in the face of growing demand, distributors of different sizes have begun fierce competition for limited inventory of equipment and parts, which has also put many distributors in a dilemma. Small and medium-sized distributor companies that established and developed supply relationships before the pandemic are experiencing an uphill battle in procurement, balancing immediate fulfillment requirements and long-term operational continuity among different customers, and maintaining customer delivery. Trust in ability.

To achieve this goal, small and medium-sized distributors need to broaden their horizons. People instinctively believe that when goods, services, or labor resources are limited, they must learn how to reduce costs and increase efficiency, but this understanding is not entirely correct. For some distributors who lack correct strategies and move forward blindly, "cost reduction and efficiency improvement" means more cumbersome work. Because of this, if small and medium-sized distributors want to weaken the disadvantage of scale and even turn it into a competitive advantage, the key lies in whether they have a clear understanding of the current market situation, which requires distributors and every link in the supply chain to Communicate with insiders and practitioners. When distributors have a good grasp of what's really going on inside their own operations and within their suppliers and customers, they can begin to identify and even predict weak links in the supply chain. While more gaps or shortcomings are discovered, which means there are more problems to solve, small and medium-sized distributors will have an easier time overcoming adversity in the future if they can dig deeper and work on strengthening their supply chains.

Key One: Take Advantage of Flexibility

As a small to mid-sized distributor, don’t feel disadvantaged by having fewer physical assets than your larger competitors, but rather take advantage of the flexibility you have. For example, when small and medium-sized distributors want to find alternative sources of supply, use new shipping channels, or reorganize teams to better balance growing workloads, they can often do so quickly without having to go through all the red tape of larger enterprises.

Even though small and medium-sized distributors may not yet employ robotics or other automated technology in their distribution centers, they have dedicated and hard-working employees who can do a great job in certain processes that rely solely on pen and paper records. Based on this, if small and medium-sized distributors digitize business data and some key workflows (such as inventory management, receiving, picking, packing and shipping), then existing employees can be responsible for other higher-value tasks. In addition, the realization of digitalization does not require a comprehensive digital transformation of business processes. Small and medium-sized distributors only need to equip employees with reliable enterprise-grade mobile intelligent terminals that can remind them when the loading truck arrives, inventory is reduced, or needs are needed on the same day. New orders shipped can bring positive changes to the company. It also reduces the number of trips between workstations when employees need to claim new tasks, update progress with supervisors or clients, or print labels.

At the same time, providing shop floor staff with a mechanism to keep supervisors and customers informed of job progress in real time means that customer support teams can spend less time on site handling inquiries, and supervisors can reallocate staff to higher priority tasks. For example, you can assist your team in placing orders on time to improve customer satisfaction; when orders and inventory surge, you can also rebalance the team's task allocation to avoid employees falling behind others.

Key 2: Make full use of existing resources

As small and medium-sized enterprises, whether it is to deal with their own business or market share challenges, they must make greater use of existing labor and technology tools. If a small and medium-sized distributor has sufficient personnel and just needs to speed up its work to increase production capacity, then the first step can be to equip it with a rugged mobile data terminal, or provide it with a barcode scanner, RFID reader, etc. according to the needs of different jobs. pickers and mobile printers, these are the essential “digital” tools needed in today’s distribution and warehousing environments, allowing employees to quickly locate, pick and pack parts and equipment, report visual quality inspection results, and invoice Notify relevant personnel when moving to the next destination, including those responsible for each aspect of the production line, loading dock staff, and customers.

Employees equipped with the appropriate tools can also perform inventory counts faster and more frequently, so small and medium-sized distributors can stock up in advance to avoid complete shortages. If supplies cannot be replenished in time due to long lead times from suppliers, distributors can also notify customers in advance and work with them to find alternative solutions to ultimately achieve on-time delivery.

If employees already have the basic technology tools, it might be time to free up their hands. Wearable Bluetooth scanners allow pickers to grab items faster and move carts more safely and efficiently than handheld scanners. Connecting an RFID reader to a mobile data terminal can give employees the "superpower" to read thousands of goods with RFID tags within a certain distance in an instant, so as to instantly locate or confirm the existing quantity. If necessary, employees can also scan barcodes on individual items and have various data immediately reported to inventory management and warehouse management systems. Depending on the software setup, this could be the beginning of a distribution center automation process. With limited labor resources, automation is key to maintaining operational continuity and gaining long-term competitive advantage.

Key Three: Improve Employee Skills

Once distributors have a real-time data stream of the entire business, it becomes easier to measure operations in terms of overall productivity and capacity. Distributors can measure performance holistically and drill down into every department, every work process, and every employee to determine where gaps need to be closed or bottlenecks removed. This process also highlights an employee’s strengths and ensures they are assigned to the appropriate team and shift. At the same time, it can pre-allocate tasks based on the current potential, responsibilities and skills of specific people.

By running the right task management software on mobile devices, employees can be cross-trained on-site when they need to be redeployed to fill vacancies, and they will also receive detailed instructions on workflow and work content. Employees can gain a full range of insights and skills through this kind of on-the-job training, thereby making more valuable contributions to the enterprise. No matter how streamlined the team is, it can achieve the work efficiency and results of a large team. Additionally, when employees are exposed to new areas of the business, they may discover things that others have overlooked with a fresh perspective, which can help connect key points in the workflow to solve problems and strengthen links in the chain.

Address challenges with a global perspective

For distributors, size is less important than flexibility, efficiency and commitment. Even when difficulties arise, by equipping your team with the right technology and tools and scaling accordingly, you can exceed customer expectations. This, in turn, will bring significant advantages to our manufacturing customers, who will have the components they need to expand their production and packaging operations and be able to take greater advantage of growth opportunities. This is a win-win strategy that will prove that scale is not the only criterion for measuring a company's value, strength or capabilities. Especially in this challenging era, a distributor's more valuable ability lies in how to successfully solve the ensuing challenges. problems to keep manufacturers’ production lines and even the entire supply chain running.