Multisourcing strategies

What's a multisourcing strategy?

In case you need to manage a component following a kanban logic but you have to mitigate supply chain risk by having two or more suppliers for the same component, the Multisourcing allows you to automatize the partition of the releases in a loop between two or more suppliers.

When the supplier of a kanban loop is a multisourcing strategy, the released kanban cards are purchased from different suppliers, based on the strategy configuration.

The fields of a multisourcing strategy

Field	Description
Name	Name of the multisourcing strategy.
Partner number	Multisourcing strategy identification code.
Custom field 1, 2 and 3	Custom fields. Remember to define the field in Company settings.

Types of multisourcing strategies

At the moment in KanbanBOX are present 2 multisourcing strategies:

• Percentage
• Percentage and Lead Time
• Weekday
• Change supplier when it has no stock

Do you need to manage other multisourcing strategies? Contact the KanbanBOX Support.

Percentage distribution of releases

With the Percentage configuration you can choose two or more suppliers, and you can define the percentage of releases you want to assign to each supplier.
When a kanban card is released, KanbanBOX considers all the releases occured in the loop after the last change in the strategy, or the last change in the kanban loop, and assigns the released card to the supplier that is farther from reaching the defined percentage target.

Example:

Supplier	A	B	C
Percentage defined in the strategy	20	50	30
Percentage reached	18	55	27
Deviation from the percentage	-2	+5	-3

The next released card will be assigned to supplier C.

Percentage and Lead Time

With the Percentage and Lead Time configuration, you can choose two or more suppliers to be associated with the multisourcing strategy, and for each supplier you can define the target percentage of releases (in a completely analogous way to the previous case) and the Lead Time.

The logic works exactly as described above, so KanbanBOX will assign the released kanban card to the supplier that has, at that particular moment, the percentage of releases the furthest from reaching the target percentage previously defined in the multisourcing strategy.

In this case, when a new card is released, KanbanBOX will use the Lead Time value associated with the chosen supplier in order to compute the Requested date, not the Lead Time defined during the creation and designing of the kanban loop, which will therefore remain unchanged.

As a consequence, when calculating the Request date of the released card, KanbanBOX will take as input not the Lead Time originally defined for the loop, but rather the Lead Time defined in the multisourcing strategy.

Day of the week in which the card is released

With the weekday configuration, for each day of the week, including Saturdays and Sundays, you can define the supplier to which assign the cards released in that specific day.

Change supplier when it has no stock

With the Change supplier when it has no stock configuration, a sequence of two or more suppliers must be chosen to automatically trigger the replenishment of a card from the new supplier, after the release of a card from the old supplier and when no more stock is present. If one or more intermediate suppliers don't have stock for the component to be transferred, the supplier won't be considered and KanbanBOX will perform the check on the next supplier in the sequence.

Example:

Part number	Card	Starting supplier A	Ending supplier B
10002030	ABC123	Full	-
10002030	ABC123	Scanning Released	-
10002030	DEF456	-	Released

This multisourcing strategy is based on the stock given by the external material management systems used by the company owner of the KanbanBOX license. To activate it and have more information, contact KanbanBOX Support.

Add a new multisourcing strategy

Procedure:

1. Get in Master data > Partners > Add strategy.
2. Fill the fields in Basic information.

3. In the section Add new configuration, choose and customize the Configuration:

   • Percentage

     • Select the Supplier from the dropdown menu and set the Percentage of releases to assign to the supplier.
     • To add other suppliers, click on Add supplier.

     The sum of the percentages assigned to the suppliers must be 100%.

   • Weekday

     • Select the Supplier from the dropdown menu for each day of the week.
   • Change supplier when it has no stock
     • Select the starting supplier from the dropdown. To add more suppliers, click on Add supplier.
     • Select the intermediate supplier(s) (optional).
     • Select the ending supplier from the dropdown menu.

4. Click on Save to save the strategy.

Update a multisourcing strategy

1. Get in Master data > Partners > Multisourcing strategies.
2. In the table Multisourcing strategies, search or filter the strategy to edit, and click on Update Multisourcing.
3. Edit the strategy and click on Save.

Delete a multisourcing strategy

Before deleting a multisourcing strategy, verify that it is not used in a loop or in a kanban card.

Procedure:

1. Get in Master data > Partners > Multisourcing strategies.
2. In the table Multisourcing strategies, search or filter the strategy to delete, and click on Delete row.
3. To confirm, click Yes.

Create a kanban loop with a multisourcing strategy

Procedure:

1. Create the multisourcing strategy.
2. Create the kanban loop as described in the article Create a new kanban loop:
   • set as supplier of the loop the strategy created at point 1.
   • on save, a new kanban loop is created with supplier the multisourcing strategy. Cards are in status New. When a card is released, KanbanBOX assigns the card to one of the suppliers of the strategy, based on the configuration of the strategy.

Visualization in the board of a loop with multisourcing

Loop with cards in New status

In the board, only the loop owner can see the loop with cards in the New status.
The supplier of the loop is the multisourcing strategy.

From the owner point of view

When the card is released, it is associated to a specific supplier of the multisourcing strategy.
Now, the loop owner sees in the board the loops with the suppliers set in the strategy and their related cards.
In the loop rows the cards that belong to the same loop but are assigned to another supplier are visible as placeholders (cards in trasparency).

From the supplier point of view

The supplier only visualizes cards automatically assigned to him in the moment of the release.
The supplier doens't visualize cards released and assigned to other suppliers of the multisourcing strategy.