An art, something requires exquisite craftsmanship, creativity and science to generate impressive results, that can be felt by people.
We want to show you this art with supply chain management, that brings practical and lasting values.
I often say supply chain, has its deceptive presentation.
We all order things and get things delivered either personally or for business.
It led us come to conclusive thinking easily ‘This is it, supply chain’.
If we could have materials ordered from overseas and get them shipped over, then we'd pretty much think we know most of it, as it satisfies ‘can order - can ship - can store’.
Most companies selling products have reached this level of happening with supply chain.
Yet how many of them are running SC like Amazon, as one of the key business competitive advantages, or even as a ‘product’ sold, profitably!!
I was expected to improve supply chain management in a company, where everyone could instruct how SC workes, esp sales and engineers… what they intended with the requests were: Order them, Bring them, Make it happen now.
These instructions could be interpreted that the stakeholders cared for the success of orders/projects, yet what they had instructed was not the way things should work, at all. It’s not their fault. They had their own very specialised areas, just a bit less in SC.
I explained to the GM/the Head of Engineers and the Head of Sales how to think things around supply chain, how to calculate, what are the reasons to justify higher selling prices and the lead time quoted; I kept them out of some lines too so that I could run it and show them: there was a better kind of supply chain management:
⚓️ SC should and could happen in a much more meaningful way, financially, operationally, resiliently and strategically.
A way after optimisation, only needs half day’s input of a full-time employee, with the responsibility to manage cash flow (90% purchases from overseas) and trade finance+ too, for a company having active sales and offices in all major Aust/NZ cities.
The company had been running on the same supply chain processes for over two decades by the time. If they had had supply chain management improved much earlier, a tremendous amount of funds (in millions) could have been spared, among all the benefits.
This is a common regret I came across over the time.
How can we deliver delightfulness to more companies, at an earlier time?
Maybe like Santa, drop a gift pack down the chimneys? 🎅🏼🎊😀
Comments