7 Strategies for Solving Supply Chain Issues

The real challenge for logistics leaders isn’t surviving supply chain chaos, it’s commanding it. You see the domino effects every day, and the pressure to manage them is immense. I’m Walter Scremin, CEO of Ontime Delivery Solutions. For over three decades, I’ve worked with Australian businesses to build resilient, controlled delivery operations.

This is not a theoretical discussion. It is a practical roadmap designed to give you direct control over the most important parts of your operation. The philosophy is simple: we move you from firefighting to a position of command by building a system, not just by applying tactics.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• The Core Problem: Why your lack of control is a feature, not a bug, of modern supply chains.
• The Internal Core: How to establish a foundation of control inside your business.
• The External Network: How to fortify your partner ecosystem for resilience.
• The Final Mile: How to secure your most critical control point.

First, Understand Why You Feel a Lack of Control

Your frustration is valid. Today’s supply chains are built for global efficiency, not local resilience. A policy shift in Asia doesn’t stay there; it quickly becomes higher diesel prices in Melbourne and critical parts shortages in Perth.

You’re expected to absorb this flood of failures. The Australian Industry Group found that 78% of Australian businesses were impacted by these disruptions in 2023. And their 2025 Outlook shows this isn’t a temporary problem. Supply chain issues remain a key business constraint at double the rate of previous years.

This means volatility is your new reality. To win, you must build a system to command it.

Part 1: The Internal Core: Establishing a Foundation of Control

You can’t control the chaos outside until you have total control inside your own four walls. This foundation is non-negotiable.

Strategy 1: Achieve True Inventory Mastery with ABC Analysis

Your inventory is cash sitting on shelves. Managing it with outdated data is a high-stakes gamble that ties up money and risks lost sales.

A simple yet powerful tool called ABC analysis gives you a precise map of where your money and risk truly lie. It allows you to focus your energy on the items that matter most to your bottom line.

How to do it:

1. Calculate Annual Consumption Value: For each Stock Keeping Unit (you might be asking, what’s an SKU? It’s just an industry term for a specific, individual product you stock), multiply its annual demand by its cost.
2. Rank and Segment Your SKUs: Create a spreadsheet and rank all your products by their annual consumption value, from highest to lowest. Then, group them into three classes:
3. • Class A: Your top 20% of items, which typically represent 80% of your total value.
   • Class B: The next 30% of items, representing about 15% of your value.
   • Class C: The bottom 50% of items, representing just 5% of your value.
4. Apply Differentiated Control: Now, you manage each class with a different set of rules

The Logic: A Trade-off Between Cash and Time

At this point, you might be asking a perfectly valid question: “Why would I hold less buffer stock for my most important items?” It seems backward, but the answer reveals the secret to smart inventory management. It’s a deliberate trade-off between protecting your Cash and protecting your Time.

• For your Class A items, you are protecting your CASH. Because they are so valuable, you check them frequently (e.g., weekly cycle counts) and keep buffer stock low. You can do this safely because you have real-time data, allowing you to reorder just in time.
• For your Class C items, you are protecting your TIME. Because they are low-value, the cost of running out (in time and hassle) is far greater than the cost of holding extra. So, you hold more buffer stock and check them less often, freeing your team from managing thousands of trivial items.

This ensures you spend your time managing your cash, not just your stock, so that your most valuable capital is protected and your risk of a profit-damaging stock-out on a key item is virtually eliminated.

“Your feeling of lost control isn’t a personal failure. The system is designed to be fragile. Acknowledging that is the first step toward building a new, stronger system that actually serves your business.”

— Walter Scremin, CEO of Ontime Delivery Solutions

Strategy 2: Install Smart Technology, One Problem at a Time

Your technology is the nervous system of your operation. But a full-system overhaul is expensive and disruptive. The philosophy here is to seek surgical precision, not a total transplant. Use targeted, low-cost technology to solve your single biggest problem first.

How to do it:

1. Diagnose the #1 Data Gap: Using the insights from your ABC analysis, identify the one area where a lack of real-time data is costing you the most money. For example, is it inaccurate stock levels for an “A” item causing emergency air freight costs?
2. Implement a Pinpoint Solution: Instead of buying a massive software suite, find an accessible tool that solves only that one problem. This could be a simple barcode scanning app like ZBar or an entry-level inventory module in software like Odoo.
3. Measure the Impact: Track the before-and-after performance for one month. Once you have hard proof of the return on investment, you have a business case to tackle the next biggest problem.

This approach ensures you invest in proven results, so that you make confident, data-backed decisions and turn technology into a tool for control, not another source of cost.

Strategy 3: Drive a Continuous Improvement Cadence

A controlled operation is never finished; it’s always improving. The most resilient businesses build a formal, non-negotiable rhythm for performance review. This turns vague goals into concrete actions.

How to do it:

1. Schedule a Quarterly Control Review: Put a mandatory 60-minute meeting in the calendar for the first week of every quarter. This is not optional.
2. Review Key Metrics: Your agenda is simple. Review hard data on 2-3 core metrics. A critical one is “On-Time In-Full” (OTIF). You might be asking, what does OTIF mean in practice? It’s the percentage of your orders that arrive exactly as promised—with the correct items and quantities, at the right location, and on the agreed-upon date.
3. Isolate One Bottleneck & Assign Ownership: Based on the data, identify the single biggest bottleneck that is hurting your numbers. Then, assign one person the responsibility for developing a solution before the next quarterly meeting.

This simple cadence creates relentless focus and accountability, so that small problems are caught and solved before they become systemic failures that threaten your bottom line and distract you from growing your business.

Part 2: The External Network: Building a Resilient Partner Ecosystem

Once you have internal control, you can start influencing your external network of suppliers and partners.

Strategy 4: Build a ‘Warm’ Bench of Backup Suppliers

Your biggest risk often isn’t your primary supplier; it’s their supplier. With industry reports showing around 80% of disruptions originate from these invisible lower-tier suppliers, having a single source is a critical vulnerability.

The most effective defence is to make your backup suppliers ‘warm’. When a crisis hits, you want to be a valued customer, not a stranger making a panic call.

How to do it:

For your top three most critical components, identify a viable local backup supplier. Place a small, regular order with them each quarter. This small investment builds a relationship and confirms their quality, so that if your primary supplier fails, you can switch seamlessly and protect your operations from a catastrophic shutdown.

“Relying on one international supplier isn’t saving you money; it’s a bet you will eventually lose. The small cost of a local backup isn’t an expense; it’s an insurance policy against total shutdown.”

— Walter Scremin, CEO of Ontime Delivery Solutions

Strategy 5: Mandate ‘First-Call’ Communication Protocols

When a disruption occurs, the first 60 minutes determine the scale of the damage. Vague agreements are useless; you need a precise, mandatory communication plan with your key suppliers.

How to do it:

Amend the contracts for your most critical suppliers with a simple “First-Call Protocol.” This protocol must define two things:

• A clear list of what constitutes a “Disruption Event” (e.g., production halt, shipping delay of over 24 hours).
• A commitment that upon such an event, they will contact your designated team member directly by phone within 60 minutes.

This simple clause transforms a supplier relationship into a true partnership, so that you get the critical information you need to react decisively while your competitors are still waiting for an email.

Strategy 6: Run a ‘First Three Calls’ Risk Drill

A generic risk plan is useless against Australian realities. Your plan must be tested against events like the Hume Highway being cut off by bushfires or a week of flooding in Queensland.

A tested plan turns panic into a rehearsed response.

How to do it:

1. Set the Scenario: This week, gather your team for a 15-minute drill. Pose a single, specific disaster. For example: “Our main freight depot in Brisbane is flooded and inaccessible for 72 hours.”
2. Ask the Critical Question: Ask, “Who are the first three people we call, in order, and what are their phone numbers?”
3. Document the Plan: Write down the answers. Use a simple template from the Australian Government or the National Emergency Risk Assessment Guidelines to formalize it.

This simple exercise immediately reveals gaps in your emergency plan, so that when a real crisis hits, your team executes a clear set of actions instead of losing precious hours to confusion.