Supply Chain Leaders

The corresponding questions for supply chain design and for the supplier is, How should the supply chain be stmctuied so that such supply chain leadership roles can be realized What are the implications of such supplier roles r ardii mai h, service levels, variety, and so on Does the supply chain leader enjoy significant profits or do those gains flow to the customer due to of competition to be the supply chain leadei ... 

Supply chain leaders manage complex systems with complex processes with Increasing complexity. Leaders orchestrate the trade-offs vertically and horizontally to deliver the business strategy. Laggards let the supply chain whip them around. 

Most companies understand that supply chains have complex processes. They also know all too well that the underlying processes are growing more complex. They live it every day. However, what most companies fail to realize is that supply chains are complex systems with finite trade-offs. These choices happen up and down the supply chain. Leaders make them consciously while laggards make them by default. They are both horizontal (cross-functional) and vertical (within a function). They are also intra-enterprise (within the company) and inter-enterprise (external to the company within a trading network). 

To effectively use assets, supply chain leaders have found that they cannot be insular. They have found that they must tear down the bricks between the silos of their own internal organizations to stretch across networks to build lasting supply chain processes. The walls of these functional silos are difficult to break down, but they must be dislodged to build the end-to-end supply chain. For, it is now not just a company s bricks, but the responsibility for all the assets of the extended network that is paramount. 

This book shares insights from these stories. To write this book, we interviewed 75 supply chain leaders from a variety of industries. These pioneers charted the path. They worked in apparel, automotive, chemical, consumer products, and high-tech and electronics industries. To better understand the evolution of supply chain management, we asked them three questions ... 

The ability to sense and shape while listening and learning will define the supply chain of the future. Supply chain leaders are currently ushering in the era of big data, predictive analytics, and learning systems. The future rvill belong to those that understand the basics of what has happened in the past but can see the potential of the future. 

There was no standard career path. They both witnessed and shaped the evolution. They saw the supply chain organization rise from the functions of procurement and manufacturing to own their own seat at the table with other operations leaders. Today, these pioneers are the new leaders of supply chain organizations in the Fortune 500. There is now a supply chain leader on the board of directors of 6 percent of the Global 1000. 

A weak link. Many of the projects implemented in this period were hastily defined and implemented. Knowledge of software and supply chain systems was scarce and the rate of change was rapid. Today s supply chain leader has inherited many of these poorly designed systems from the prior decade. 

Like the story of the three little pigs, supply chain leaders wanted to build supply chains that could withstand the winds of demand volatility or the pressure of supply disruption. These supply chains were built to sense outside-in and change the supply chain response based on market conditions. Supply chain leaders that built resilient supply... 

Supply Chain Leader, North American Manufacturing Company... 

The market-driven supply chain is the future state aspiration for the supply chain leader. The concepts are based on building advanced processes to test and learn. These advanced analytics can power learning systems that continnally sense, learn, and adapt. 

So, who does supply chain best There are many attempts in the market to crown a supply chain leader and while there are many methodologies attempting to define who does supply chain the best, they are inadequate. One methodology throws all companies into a spreadsheet and compares them on growth, inventory, and asset utilization and asks peers to rate the companies. This methodology has a number of problems. Supply chain excellence cannot be determined this simplistically. Instead, it needs to be evaluated in a stepwise holistic manner based on three criteria ... 

In interviews, supply chain pioneers were asked, "When you think of supply chain excellence, which company comes to mind " The first response by the supply chain leaders is that no one company stands above the rest. The collective opinion is that while individual companies do pieces of the supply chain well, there is no one company that does everything well. 

Based on the evaluation by peers, over the course of the last 30 years, P G is seen as the supply chain leader. With a dogged focus on the consumer, P G has been on a mission to deliver a better response for shoppers in the store. The supply chain played a critical role in delivering on this brand promise. 

P G s supply chain leaders were among the early supply chain pioneers. They were primarily engineers. In conversations, they clearly understood that the supply chain was a system that had innate... 

While building the end-to-end value chain was their stated goal for the supply chain pioneers, it has not been their destination. Supply chain leaders have talked about building... 

Supply chain globalization happened in multiple phases. The first stage was from 1999 to 2003. In this phase, companies opened regional offices, formulated channel strategies, and initiated work to open new channels. For some companies, global expansion was a drive to lower costs through the use of cheaper sources of labor but for supply chain leaders, it was a quest for value. 

As the supply chain matures, supply chain leaders partner with the commercial teams to design outside-in processes that can better sense and shape demand. They use these insights to drive a more profitable response. In our interviews for this book, 5 percent of companies were at this stage of maturity, which is often termed demand driven. 

The right place to start to maximize value is to design the supply chain. While most supply chain leaders believe that the starting place is process excellence, this is erroneous. The change from cost to value must start with strategy. 

Food. The food supply chain is usually defined by product handling characteristics. This could be the management of an expensive ingredient or a type of storage. In these supply chains, supply chain leaders will often speak of frozen, refrigerated, or dry supply chains. Alternatively, they may reference terms like shelf-stable and short life cycle or open-code date supply chains. 

There are three primary forms of networks to help the supply chain leader improve value demand, supply, and innovation. These can operate singularly or together. They usually have a different flavor by industry. 

The greatest and most lasting impact on value happens when they converge and support the supply chain strategy. We find that supply chain leaders are often good at all three types, while supply chain laggards have not begun to define these critical network relationships. 

In interviews, no supply chain leaders in either company could imagine running operations without daily demand data. The insights to be gained from updated channel views are too important to managing a dynamic supply chain. 

Demand translation The translation of demand outside-in from the market to each role within the organization. The design of this system recognizes that the requirements for demand visibility for each supply chain leader—distribution, manufacturing, and procurement—are different. 

In each stage of the market-driven capability model, the role of demand changes requiring a redefinition of forecasting processes. Additionally, at each stage of the demand process, a supply chain leader can chose to constrain the forecast (reducing volume requirements based on channel or supply-side constraints) to better manage the supply chain. 

European Consumer Products Supply Chain Leader, November 2011... 

While knowledge and insights can be dealt with through systems and process, how does one capture wisdom Supply chain leaders at winning companies demonstrate wisdom. 

Each supply chain leader learned that strong horizontal supply chain processes are a prerequisite to drive success in building market-driven value networks. They need to be built brick by brick. This chapter is about their journey. Let s start with the most pivotal case studies ... 

The supply chain leader sees CSR as an opportunity, while the supply chain laggard complains about the burden of corporate social responsibility initiatives for its supply chain. For all, it is an opportunity to build value networks brick by brick. 

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