Supply chain at a snack company: five weekly jobs

At a snack company that does not own a factory, the supply chain role comes down to five jobs that repeat every week: planning ingredients, tracking packaging stock, holding production slots with partner facilities, moving finished goods to the warehouse and on to customers, and keeping records for every batch. It sounds simple. The difficulty is that the five jobs hook into each other, and one late job drags the other four with it. This piece is for anyone considering the role at Color of Vietnam.

Job one: ingredient planning

Every week opens with three questions. What do the coming production runs need, what is in the warehouse, and how long do suppliers take to deliver? Cashews, rice, corn, seaweed, cacao, oats, peanuts and dried cranberries each have their own lead time and their own shelf life. The planner orders early enough to avoid a shortage but not so early that ingredients sit in storage until they are close to their date.

One part is easy to overlook: ingredients that have arrived are not ready to use. Each lot needs a COA (certificate of analysis) from the supplier and sometimes further testing. That waiting time belongs in the plan.

Job two: packaging stock

Packaging means film, jars, lids, labels and cartons. Each is bought in print runs with a minimum quantity, so packaging stock tends to be larger than ingredient stock and easier to forget. The weekly task is to reconcile the figures in the sheet with a physical count, both in our warehouse and at the partner facility, because some waste on the packing machine is normal.

When a brand changes its design, the supply chain person works out how much of the old print remains, how many runs it will last and when the new print must be ordered, so the two versions neither overlap nor leave a gap.

Job three: production slots with partner facilities

We manufacture with partner facilities, so the production calendar is theirs. Our job is to book slots early, confirm that ingredients and packaging are on site before the run date, send the correct version of the specification and be present at the facility for a new batch or a flavour change.

This job needs one habit above all: call ahead, do not wait. A run pushed back by days because one roll of film was missing is an entirely avoidable mistake, and the supply chain person is the only one who can see all three sides clearly enough to avoid it.

Job four: finished goods

Goods coming back from a run are counted, checked against the delivery note, stored by batch and rotated first in, first out. A snack warehouse should be dry, cool and out of direct sun, with the bottom cartons not crushed under the stack. From the warehouse, goods go to distributors, to customers, or into sample sets for partners who are evaluating us.

Samples are the interesting part. A sample set for a buyer has to contain the right flavours from a batch with plenty of shelf life left, come with the spec sheet and be packed to survive a long journey. A sample that arrives soft or broken loses an opportunity, and nobody tells you it happened.

Job five: records

Every batch has a file: ingredient COAs, goods in and goods out, the production record, finished-goods test results and a retained sample. The supply chain person keeps these tidy so that tracing a batch takes an afternoon rather than a week.

Beyond batch records there are facility records: the ISO 22000:2018 certificate held by our partner facilities, currently being renewed, the Halal certificate and the US FDA food facility registration. The role tracks the validity of each document and flags it before it expires, because buyers always ask.

What a week looks like with us

Our week runs to a rhythm:

• Early in the week: check ingredient and packaging stock against the next two weeks of runs, and order whatever is running short.
• Midweek: call or visit the partner facilities, confirm the slot, look at the goods just produced and bring the retained samples back.
• End of the week: update the tracking sheet, pack any sample sets that need sending, and note what drifted from the plan and why.

Our tracking sheet is only a spreadsheet, but it is kept honestly, every week. In this role our value of See It Through means something very concrete. A job you take on is followed until the goods are in the right place and the paperwork is in the right place, not until the email has been sent.

If you like work with a clear rhythm, enjoy numbers that reconcile and want to follow a product from a sack of ingredients to a pack on the shelf, have a look at our open roles or send us a general application.