Liquids & Semi-Liquids Filling Services Category Procurement Intelligence Report

Business practices within Liquids & Semi-Liquids Filling Services market are heavily influenced by changing trends across the category as well as within the broader Warehousing and Storage market. Rise in minimum labor wages across countries such as the US and China will result in increased employee expenses for Liquids & Semi-Liquids Filling Services suppliers who will be forced to pass on a part of this increase to their buyers.

Managing the logistics risks and building a resilient supply chain has taken the centerstage among corporate priorities. Companies are investing heavily to be able to detect disruptions in time and respond in a manner which does not put the core operations at risk. All suppliers within the ecosystem are expected to play their part and embrace the processes, tools and technologies that their customers have implemented to build a resilient supply chain.

Businesses are focused on maintaining a lean inventory of raw materials, parts, components and finished goods. While it is a novel concept to keep the inventory costs in check, it also highly challenging to implement in a global sourcing context and requires a clock work like optimization of logistics and warehousing processes. Companies are moving to a completely digital supply chain footprint to reduce errors and risks associated with such strategies.

As a result, category managers need to closely monitor the Liquids & Semi-Liquids Filling Services procurement trends and identify changes required in their procurement environment for the category.

It has become imperative for category managers to remain as agile as possible in terms of their procurement practices. However, it is not always easy to quickly spot and implement alternative practices in a category like Liquids & Semi-Liquids Filling Services. To help quick decision making, this report advises on several procurement best practices that have worked well for category managers.

For example, Buyers must track suppliers' quality management systems to ensure that the products are stored in a hygienic environment and have almost zero probability of occurrence of damages. This is particularly critical for buyers in industries such as food and beverages and pharmaceutical.

Buyers should negotiate to get the best add-on services from their suppliers, such as real-time tracking, route optimization, big data analytics to plan and forecast future requirements and Six Sigma practices to ensure the procurement of quality services.

It is important for category managers to track and measure supplier performance against a defined set of KPIs that are agreed upon by both parties during contract negotiation, including inventory accuracy, dock-to-stock, and on-time shipment. This is critical to ensure the optimal level of service. Suppliers' performance can also be linked to a part of their fee, which can be paid depending on the level of services rendered.

Liquids & Semi-Liquids Filling Services procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Liquids & Semi-Liquids Filling Services procurement. Some examples include: