Riverwood Solutions Survey

38 Percent of Supply Chain Executives Feel They Lack Proper Visibility During the Holidays

DALLAS, TX--(Marketwired - Nov 19, 2015) - Riverwood Solutions, the innovator in managed supply chain services and operations consulting, recently conducted a survey of supply chain executives. The survey, fielded among 600 supply chain executives, revealed that the majority of executives agree that getting from prototype to product is the most challenging aspect of bringing wearable technology to market and nearly half (48 percent) agree that the most difficult part of dealing with overseas suppliers is understanding their business culture. 62 percent of the executives polled agree that quality concerns are the biggest challenge when selecting a vendor.

38 percent of supply chain executives feel they lack proper visibility and communication with their vendors during the holidays and 52 percent believe fitness trackers will be big this holiday season.

The big challenge: getting from prototype to product

52 percent of supply chain executives agree that the most challenging aspect of bringing wearable technology to market is getting from the prototype to market.

• 19 percent say the challenge lies in making the technology work
• 19 percent say sourcing custom parts is the challenge
• 10 percent say raising capital is the challenge
  
  

Nearly 1 in 4 executives also pointed to prototypes when asked what the biggest surprise was in getting a product to the market: 24 percent said they had no idea how time consuming it would be to get from prototype to product and 19 percent said they underestimated how expensive getting from prototype to product would be.

Other surprises included:

• Vendors promising what they can't deliver (19 percent)
• I didn't realize how many vendors I'd need to work with (10 percent)
• I had to travel to my vendor many more times than I expected (10 percent)
  
  

Lost in translation

48 percent of supply chain executives agree that the most difficult part of dealing with overseas suppliers is understanding their business culture.

• Nearly 1 in 4 (24 percent) cite difficulty validating capabilities of overseas suppliers
• 14 percent say the difficulty lies in agreeing on terms and contract negotiations
• 10 percent say the difficulty is working in different time zones
  
  

In terms of supply chain risk, one-third of executives say the risk lies in single-source components. 29 percent have difficulty accurately predicting the volumes they need and nearly 1 in 5 (19 percent) say sometimes lead times are too long.