Study released of supply chain practices of fabless and IDM companies

USA: GSA has announced the release of the Supply Chain Practices Report, a collaborative effort between GSA’s Supply Chain Performance Working Group and supply chain management firm JDA Software Group on the trends around supply chain processes, metrics, governance and tools for fabless and IDM companies of various sizes and in different stages of evolution.

Companies can gain valuable insights, trends and benchmarks from this research and can assess their supply chain maturity against the median and the best-in-class population. These insights will enable companies to take supply chain improvement initiatives that will help unlock the business value trapped within their supply chain.

Key findings from the study include:
* Semiconductor companies of all sizes deal with a certain minimum level of complexity in their supply chain.
* Semiconductor companies demonstrate strong execution and performance of the core processes of manufacturing and distribution through material requirements planning (MRP) and distribution/logistics, respectively.
* 1 in 4 companies do not recognize sales and operations planning (S&OP) and demand forecasting as key supply chain processes.
* Few companies recognize inventory optimization and capacity planning as supply chain processes.
* The majority of companies that have supply chain processes in place measure the performance of these processes.
* Companies can gain significant operational agility by running a master production plan more frequently than once a month and in creating a material- and capacity-feasible plan.
* The importance of measuring supply chain performance through metrics and KPIs must be recognized by companies of all sizes as a critical success factor for supply chain agility.