Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

Posted on by Teddy Nee

At its heart, supply chain management requires a balancing of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality. Managing the true cost to serve for each and every order is the aspiration to allow better negotiation and value creation across the supply chain. Customer- and consumer-centricity helps anticipate product and service requirements. Supply chains are becoming more extended and complex with a consequent increase in risk and the need for resilience. There are multiple data sources making it difficult to manage and measure end-to-end processes and metrics. Aligning priorities through integrated planning remains pivotal, but there is an explosion of data available that needs to be incorporated and the value extracted to understand how supply and demand issues impact profit and revenue targets.

New technology provides greater supply chain transparency. Strategic supplier engagement continues to be important as a way of reducing costs and mitigating risk. Effective supply chain management can be either a compelling competitive differentiator or, conversely, a source of risk, cost and poor customer service.

Organizations are looking to enable better and more consistent decision-making across complex processes with diverse systems and data. Many are leveraging business intelligence (BI) platforms to give them the capability to make decisions across the organization, including environments in which mobility and access to decision-critical information on the go is crucial. Putting the information in the hands of the people on the front line—those managing supply chain processes—is key to enabling decision-making at the point of decision. But this requires synchronizing an enormous amount of data that comes from many systems and sources in a way that it can be easily consumed by people who need to act on the insights.

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What do you think is important in Supply Chain Performance Management? Share your opinions with us in the comment box.

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Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

Posted on by Teddy Nee

At its heart, supply chain management requires a balancing of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality. Managing the true cost to serve for each and every order is the aspiration to allow better negotiation and value creation across the supply chain. Customer- and consumer-centricity helps anticipate product and service requirements. Supply chains are becoming more extended and complex with a consequent increase in risk and the need for resilience. There are multiple data sources making it difficult to manage and measure end-to-end processes and metrics. Aligning priorities through integrated planning remains pivotal, but there is an explosion of data available that needs to be incorporated and the value extracted to understand how supply and demand issues impact profit and revenue targets.

New technology provides greater supply chain transparency. Strategic supplier engagement continues to be important as a way of reducing costs and mitigating risk. Effective supply chain management can be either a compelling competitive differentiator or, conversely, a source of risk, cost and poor customer service.

Organizations are looking to enable better and more consistent decision-making across complex processes with diverse systems and data. Many are leveraging business intelligence (BI) platforms to give them the capability to make decisions across the organization, including environments in which mobility and access to decision-critical information on the go is crucial. Putting the information in the hands of the people on the front line—those managing supply chain processes—is key to enabling decision-making at the point of decision. But this requires synchronizing an enormous amount of data that comes from many systems and sources in a way that it can be easily consumed by people who need to act on the insights.

Read more at Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

What do you think about this topic? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box.

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2015 New Year’s Resolutions for the Supply Chain Industry

Posted on by Teddy Nee

2015 New Year’s Resolutions for the Supply Chain Industry

Resolution #1 – Stop using the term VISIBILITY

People say that information is power. I beg to differ. I say, an informed decision is power. The visibility term has been over used. I’ve even heard some say that getting visibility to your supply chain is 80% of the challenge. They must not have run a supply chain. I see many supply chain leaders that have visibility, some in excel and some in automated tools. The ones that don’t have visibility can easily call the supplier and get it. Getting visibility isn’t the challenge. The real 80% challenge is “what are you doing with the visibility?”

Resolution #2 – Read only ONE “Cool Theme” report

In 2015, I resolve to read only one Cool Theme report. I’m tired of research analysts peddling these themes as a means to gain an edge on readership. Yet, I watch the audience during some of these Cool Theme presentations. And, half the people are on their smartphone working core issues back home, while the Analyst is talking about how supply chains should save the Panamanian golden frog, reduce the ozone layer, produce products with plastic wire from 3D printers and generate forecasts from Facebook posts!

Resolution #3 – Stop moaning about Bad Data

Let’s face it, everyone has some form of bad data. And, when you include all your tiered suppliers, they have bad data. The one constant is that you will never fix all the internal and external bad data. Yet, I still hear supply chain leaders say they need to focus first on fixing the data. I’ve seen many presentations from “Top 25” supply chains and how they’ve cleaned data, and why they should be considered a top tier supply chain story.

Resolution #4 – Fix the Disruption you can influence, not the Disruption you are concerned with

There are two types of disruptions. That which you are concerned with, and that which you can influence.

Volatility, regulation, geopolitics, economics, energy, and the list goes on. These are in your Circle of Concern. They happen, and you should be concerned. Yet, many supply chain leaders face fail to focus on the Circle of Influence, the area where you can make a difference.

Resolution #5 – Scrap the Talent Research, Make Planners more Productive

After reading all the Talent Research done in 2014, the topics of attrition, retiring professionals, and university-business alignment, I notice a big gap. The one thing missing in all this Supply Chain Talent research is the concept of being more productive with the talent you already have.

How can every supply chain improve productivity? In every supply chain I’ve seen in my past 25 years, there’s one constant – they all use some form of Excel – mostly to search for exceptions. Planners spend half their day dumping ERP and BI data into Excel, and then search for exceptions.