Few industries move as quickly as the consumer electronics market. The constant upheaval for new technology and the sensitive nature of the finished products can complicate a supply chain quickly, but a good logistics partner can help solve these challenges and more. Here’s how:
Short Product Lifecycle
With products being updated every year, the challenges every product sees over the course of its lifecycle get condensed down and creates an environment full of risk. You’ll need more safety stock than most industries to ensure you can meet fluctuating consumer demand, and this can lead to higher carrying costs and larger risks if the product doesn’t perform. Working with a 3PL with the capability to forecast fluctuating demand and create a supply chain strategy with these patterns to seamlessly adjust based on variations in price.
Risks of Long-Term Storage
For most consumer products, the shelf life of a unit can be nearly endless. But electrical components require a special balance of environmental factors to ensure your merchandise remains in good working order. JIT offers component drying ovens and dry packing services that can extend the shelf life of electronics by two years should the need arise.
Globalized Partnerships
Manufacturing consumer electronics requires the tracking, receiving, organizing, and reordering of many delicate parts from partners worldwide. Strong visibility and transparency across your supply chain is fundamental to catching discrepancies while there’s still time to make a contingency plan. You need one harmonious network that reaches end-to-end to communicate effectively with your team and suppliers.
Numerous Sensitive Components
With electrical inputs and outputs, motherboards, local and remote buttons, batteries, motors and more, consumer electronics products are some of the most complex in the world. Sometimes they’re going to have failures. When they do, our team can help you make adjustments quickly and test for the root cause with our light sub-assembly and module testing services. If instead you’re a producer of electrical components that need prepared for assembly offsite, we can also offer tape and reeling services.
Demand and Variety
Consumer tastes and interests are wildly customized, and the need for new products isn’t slowing down. This wide variety of SKUs will continue to shorten product lifecycles and further complicate product development, sourcing, and fulfillment. The better inventory management strategy a company has, the better they can meet customer demands by accurately tracking the movement of products, and the more profitable your business can be.
Decision Fatigue
Every day, your team is bombarded with new challenges to resolve in a way that balances costs, revenues, and service levels. In order to do this successfully, you need to collaborate with your team, but it can be difficult to make changes with a constant stream of new information on changes in supply, demand, and capacity. Take as much off of your plate as you can. An IOT-enhanced supply chain can automate inventory management based upon your long-term supply chain strategy while accounting for pre-determined short stops should your business fluctuate drastically outside its norm.
A good warehousing, fulfillment and logistics partnership can take the challenges faced by the consumer electronics industry and turn them into opportunities to provide better service and streamline distribution processes. Outsource your needs, and you’ll allow your team the freedom to focus on discovering what’s next to make your products better than the competition.