On-time delivery is one of the key performance indicators in the manufacturing industry. It is imperative to persist with your on-time delivery. Failing to do so can result in your business struggling and can be challenging to survive. Delivery could be of any nature. It could be the delivery of your e-commerce packages, delivering directly to the consumers’ residence, raw materials, or components to the production line and delivery of your goods to the retailers or stockists.
Timely delivery is something that keeps your customers happy by providing complete tracking details to your customers for their complete satisfaction. The distribution, transportation, and logistics are the most crucial part of setting up and running a manufacturing business. It is not only a challenge for small enterprises, retail, and e-commerce businesses but also in other sectors that face several problems like the delivery management for offices, clients, and colleagues.
Your delivery performance objectives are two: customer satisfaction and low operating cost. You must strategically work to optimize your delivery system based on your goals with efficient customer service and the lowest possible price involved.
Here are the top five tips that you may consider to achieve remarkable targets of delivery performance indicators:
Table of Contents
1.Maintain correct inventories
Managing a manufacturing business requires a lot of planning and internal processing, including keeping the systems up to date. For the large-scale manufacturing industry, it is very challenging to manage over a hundred orders per week. However, there are many tools available in the market to manage the booking of deliveries individually. One of the most popular tools is Rapid book. Keeping the correct inventory count and choosing the best reliable suppliers are the key steps in managing the logistics properly.
It could be a very awkward and difficult situation to handle if you do not have the product in your warehouse that you are advertising on your website. So, you need to have control over the inventory, whether you are producing yourself or you are outsourcing the products from someone else. Tracking your list is the key to manage your business delivery. If you seek to master the art of delivery, you ought to know the supply and demand, with the correct number of inventories that are forecasted to be ready by the production line.
2. Make quality your top priority
Make the quality your top priority and perfection to be the part of your tradition. A big put off for your on-time delivery is the poor quality of products, which requires reproduction and reruns due to the returns by the customers or the final delivery department. It is essential to follow the critical performing indexes to produce quality products that will eventually keep your production delivery time right on track. It does not matter if the product arrives on time, and the product is of low quality or defective. It would not count on your success on-time deliveries. Every business is struggling to achieve maximum efficiency levels. Therefore, it is essential to monitor your efficiency levels and find the overall effectiveness of the production equipment. There are three key factors to identify if you are running the business effectively by ensuring to deliver right at your promised delivery date. We all know that a streamlined production would allow you to perform timely delivery performance effectively.
3. A well trained and happy workforce
To manage your delivery system efficiently, you need to look after your workforce efficiently. If we talk about the business delivery system, drivers are the best custodians of your business and other assets. If you want your delivery system to be impeccable, you ought to maintain a happy and well-trained workforce. They are so familiar with the delivery processes that you can entirely rely on them. To create a healthy competition, you can reward the best performing worker. On-time delivery is the result of hiring the correct workforce and proper procedures involving efficient people to make sure that your products reach the buyers within the given delivery time. The training of your workforce would streamline the process further.
The more you keep your staff happy, the better the environment and positivity would prevail to entail the serenity in deliveries. Still, there should be a proper count of your turn over to organize an optimized delivery procedure.
4.Be transparent to your customers
You must have heard or said it yourself, that you will not order from that company after having a lousy shipping experience or an extraordinary shipping charge. The loyalty of your customers depends totally on the trust that you build with them. The vice-chairman of the Ogilvy group once stated that the delivery waiting time is not a more significant issue, but not conveying to the customer causes the main frustration. It is essential to be clear and transparent with your customers, and keeping them updated with the price and shipping, earns you their loyalty. You can also provide different options for delivery having a combination of price and delivery time, can be a direct and honest approach. Providing your customers all the relevant information, including the correct delivery duration, would avoid unwelcome surprises. This information that you intend to deliver should be straight, simple and easy to comprehend. Also providing all the details and having an honest approach would not ultimately win your customer’s hearts unless you are delivering what your customers require within the acceptable frame of time.
5.Choose best shipping partners
You will have to choose some services depending on where and how quick you have to deliver the packages. Do not hesitate to check all the services that are available and select based on their price per weight and the mileage to be covered for the delivery. It would help you to decide on the best shipping and logistics partners. Your customers would not differentiate between the various shipping partners that are in your list; all they require is the timely delivery of their orders with the correct products that were purchased from you. For them, transportation is also part of the purchasing experience. So, select your purchasing partners or delivery tools and resources very carefully. You cannot afford to lose the customer with just a little bad experience at this last stage of completing your order process.
Conclusion
Most of the manufacturing and e-commerce businesses have their delivery services. However, some companies collaborate with their shipping partners. The best practices and management of the workforce within the delivery unit leads to happier customers.
Infographic created by FMH Conveyors – flexible roller conveyor