‘BIC In Practice’: Physical Supply Chain
Our ‘BIC In Practice’ focus for March is the Physical Supply Chain.
The physical supply chain has continually evolved over its long history in the book industry. The pace of that change has accelerated rapidly since the pandemic and combined with a focus on making environmentally conscious decisions means that effective standards and best practices are critical.
This edition of ‘BIC In Practice’ explores a core range of projects, standards, best practices, training, accreditation and more in the sections listed below.
BIC’s work in this area and how you can benefit
BIC has a number of core projects, standards and best practices across physical supply chain, including: Industry Returns Initiative (IRI), Acquisitions and Divestments for Physical Products, Ordering Best Practice, Out of Print Best Practice, BIC Realtime, Weights and Dimensions Best Practice and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
Collectively, the outputs of these projects contribute to the following benefits:
- Remove unnecessary costs
- Streamline and simplify processes
- Support minimising returns and waste
- Improve the efficiency of problem resolution and resources
- Maintain an efficient and effective physical supply chain, and hence enable an optimised customer experience
- Gain clarity on definitions, roles and responsibilities
- Define and adhere to/implement a trusted, industry recognised set of operating procedures, standards and best practices
- Require that trading partners adopt the same industry recognised best practices/standards
BIC members can also apply to join the BIC Physical Supply Chain Committee and access Technical Implementation Clinics.
Members and non-members alike can access the BIC Supply Chain Excellence Award (SCEA) and Metadata Excellence Award (MEA) Accreditation Schemes and training courses.
Find out more and how to get involved
The best way to get an overview of the BIC’s work with and for libraries is to view and download the ‘BIC: In Practice’ PDF document which in addition to the above also includes links to further useful BIC resources. You can also share the PDF with your colleagues and wider industry acquaintances. Details of how to access BIC’s work and becoming actively involved are found within the PDF.
Our first four ‘BIC: In Practice’ documents focusing on i) Greening the Supply Chain, ii) Metadata and Classification and iii) Digital Supply Chain and iv) Libraries were published earlier this year and are available in the Resource Centre.
