Читать книгу Supply Chain Management Best Practices - David Blanchard - Страница 16

There's no getting around it—supply chain management is just plain difficult. No single company has all the answers, and what's more, most companies ask virtually the same questions. So why are some companies celebrated for their supply chain successes, while other companies seem to be stuck in a rut? What distinguishes a best-in-class supply chain from every other supply chain?

Daniel Stanton, author of Supply Chain Management for Dummies, says there are clear differences between good supply chains and bad ones: “A good supply chain will always give your customers what they want for a price that they're willing to pay, while leaving a sufficient profit margin for your company.” That definition, he admits, sounds a bit simplistic, as he hastens to add that “actually designing and managing a supply chain that can profitably meet your customers' expectations is tricky.”¹² So what's the secret to supply chain success?

As this book will illustrate, every top-performing company—no matter what industry it competes in—has aggressively attacked its inventory problems, committed resources to improving its customer service levels, and partnered with its key suppliers to take control of its supply chain. Every single one of them.

Top-performing supply chains, quite frankly, do things a little differently from everyone else. According to Debra Hofman, an analyst with Gartner, best-in-class companies share these three traits:

1 They aim for balance. These companies may not be the very best in every category, but they are consistently good enough in all areas that they add up to be best-in-class.

2 They increase demand visibility. Having a high level of forecast accuracy is the key to reaching perfect order fulfillment, which is the holy grail of customer service.

3 They isolate high costs. The best companies know where they hold their costs and why, so that's where they focus their best practices and technology investments.¹³

Karen Butner, who leads the IBM Institute for Business Value, boils it all down to one common factor: “Top supply chains all have the ability to respond quickly to shifts in demand with innovative products and services.”¹⁴

When it comes to best practices, supply chain success requires commitment at the highest corporate levels. It should surely come as no surprise that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, used to manage the company's end-to-end supply chain, or that prior to becoming chair and CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra ran her company's global product development, purchasing, and supply chain. Mike Duke, former CEO of Walmart, had previously run the retail giant's logistics department. These companies all live or die by their supply chain proficiency, so having a chief executive who understands the interplay between every corporate department, as well as the interrelationships with both customers and suppliers, just makes sense.

“Emerging supply chain leaders are those who can handle the day-to-day work of plan-source-make-deliver while simultaneously seeing further over the horizon,” observes Kevin O'Marah, chief content officer with supply chain research firm SCM World. “This means understanding where the business's strategy is likely to hit a wall or, better still, what confluence of trends might create a sustainable profit opportunity down the road.”¹⁵

Bruce Tompkins, president of supply chain consulting firm MonarchFx, who has worked with many supply chain professionals over a four-decade career, offers these five characteristics of great supply chain leaders:

1 A calm demeanor.

2 Experienced at solving relevant problems.

3 Learner—somebody who has “a good working knowledge of supply chains in general and [their] company specifically,” he says.

4 A good listener.

5 Collaborator. “Great leaders don't do things all by themselves, and set the speed for the entire organization,” Tompkins observes. “They know how to use the people around them to get things done as a team or group.”¹⁶

Booz Allen, the consulting firm that first popularized the term supply chain management, reports that companies with CEO-level support for their supply chain projects have nearly twice the annual savings in customer service costs as companies where the responsibility is lower in the organization. In a survey of senior executives, Booz Allen concludes, “Without guidance and oversight from the CEO and the company's full leadership team, the supply chain's performance often does not live up to expectations.”¹⁷

Best practices don't just happen by throwing a lot of money at your supply chain problems. Improvements come through strategies that identify and track key supply chain processes early and often. As J. Paul Dittmann, director of the University of Tennessee's Office of Corporate Partnership, has observed, very few companies actually have a documented supply chain strategy.¹⁸ “Such a strategy,” he suggests, “starts with assessing the future needs of their customers. The strategy development process then determines the new supply chain capabilities the company will need in the future to meet its customers' needs. Unfortunately, most supply chain organizations are so consumed with the daily battles of cutting cost, managing inventory, and delivering good customer service that they don't plan properly for the future, sometimes with disastrous results.” Indeed, whenever companies experience the first hint of trouble, whether it's the onset of an economic recession or a new competitor that seemingly sprang up overnight, the supply chain strategy is often shelved, where it sits collecting dust for many years.

In short, building and maintaining an end-to-end supply chain organization takes money, but it also takes time, talent, energy, focus, commitment from senior management, and a lot of guts to pull it off successfully. However, those are the qualities that the best-run companies in the world share, and it's why they're on top. As Dittmann says, “supply chain is the frontier of competition.” In the next chapter, we'll look at specific examples of how some well-known companies in a number of different industries are managing their best-in-class supply chains.