Buyer Role in Managing Strikes

There have been lots of new aspects about purchasing that I am learning lately. The latest is understanding of handling of strike at supplier end. This is a nightmare situation for a buyer when his supplier, who is single source for many critical components, is hit by strike. To start with once the strike has started the buyer has very little time to react but there are lots of steps which can prevent the strike or give advance warning signals of the same and also prevent the line stoppage at his end.

Buyers are the eyes and ears of an organizations supply chain. They are the one who are at constant touch with the outer world and they have to keep looking for clues of any impending catastrophe. Understanding the enivornment at supplier end is possible on frequent supplier visits. There is a popular saying that “Prevention is better then cure”. Not only looking minutely at the process and raw material of the supplier it is important to keep on communicating with workers at supplier end. Machine operators, dispatch workers and other shop floor workers provide many clues of distress related to salary or working culture. Immediately this should be discussed with the supplier management at the highest order and necessary corrective actions should be placed.

Although despite of best efforts strikes do happen like the current strike in labor sensitive North Indian Auto Hub around Delhi / NCR. It is also important to deal with the crisis by moving to alternate source and planning your inventory accordingly. However it is very difficult to completely negate the effects of these strikes and almost impossible to prevent such occurrences but detail and thorough planning can reduce the downtime at the manufacturing organization to certain degrees.