What is your role in the value chain?

By Ann-Christin Pålsson, Ellen Riise & Johan Widheden

It is important to identify the role of your company and your products in the value chain as requirements, activities and responsibilities can vary depending on your role. Also, opportunities can be found in knowing exactly how your product is used at the customer or consumer in order to further improve on its function.

As a raw materials supplier, supplying materials to different types of industries, the requirements and expectations of your customers may vary greatly. Customers can have very explicit requirements that may be conflicting or even irrelevant for your own production. Cooperation with your customers may be a good way to understand ecah other and further improve the end product for the profit of you as well as your customer.

If you, on the other hand, are a company producing consumer products, the requirements and expectations of the consumers are often not explicitly communicated, but may be identified through market research. To meet the expectations, cooperation with your suppliers and upstream supply chain is often needed .