Overcoming the barriers to supply chain integration

Traditional organisations have grown heavy with layer upon layer of management and bureaucracy, 

These days most companies are familiar with the idea of mission statements as an articulation of the vision of the business. The mission statement seeks to define the purpose of the business, its boundaries and its aspirations. It is now by no means uncommon for organisations to have such statements for the business as a whole and for key constituent components. What some companies have found is that there can be significant benefits to defining the logistics vision of the firm. 

The four elements of logistics-derived customer value highlighted later in this chapter are Better, Faster, Cheaper, Closer and the criterion for a good logistics vision statement is that it should provide the roadmap for how these four goals are to be achieved. 

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This chapter describes an approach to overcoming the barriers inherent when several organizations are joined together. The solution was a partnership between the new company and a third-party provider to whom Thames Water turned to solve supply chain integration problems. 

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