‘The Pigs are mine’
Having been reading the letters from Rockefeller to his son recently.
What a wise, and adorable father!! These letters shed light on quite some of my confusion too.
When Rockefeller was talking about the hazards of ‘free lunch’, he told a story about catching wild pigs.
In the story, the old man knew he got the pigs as soon as they took the first bite of the bait….
The whole capturing was not a short process. It leveraged pigs’ relaxation on easy food, step by step, until the finishing of the wood trap.
That confident anticipation, you can have as well on business running, when you have a well-performed supply chain! (where it's applicable)
Let’s have a look at different supply chain performance levels, broadly divided:
⬆️ The top ones - Things are well functioning. The demand, material availability, costs, timing, people, manufacturing, logistics, cash flow, and even foreign currency hedging are well netted. Things are expectable, reliable, solid and resilient.
This gives management a very sound basis to plan and implement the development strategies, to market the new campaigns and to collect profits and great branding at the same time.
Supply chain is a differentiating advantage, a positive big chunk of resources for the overall business operations.
It’s like a strong spine to an athlete, supporting him/her, to perform those demanding sports programs.
➡️ The middle level - As-usual practices are predominant here.
People are on the current tasks, less knowing much about the next happening. It takes some effort to communicate across functions connecting with supply chain.
From time to time, supply chain people are stressed with workloads and deadlines and got defeated by some bad deliveries.
Things are happening but with some push-and-drag.
Supply chain is a grinding trunk of the machine. Yet within the companies, it could be taken as this has been the way and this is the way.
Many companies’ supply chains we saw were somewhere around this middle level.
While things are running, limited adapability, big unnecessary costs, inefficiency and hidden vulnerability are not pleasantly carried along.
⬇️ The bottom level - Material costs, people costs, timing issues, holes, messes and difficulties everywhere. People are heavily loaded, the air is stressed. Things seem to be happening, yet are they what had been expected?
This is the painfully out-of-control level. Complaining, dragging, and blaming are often happenings.
The supply chain, instead of supporting the business, is like heavy luggage on the back of a poor horse.
When a company got hit badly by supply chain disruptions or unfavourable economic conditions, things could be hanging on like this.
⭐️ What we do, is to help invigorate the supply chain operations, so that our clients can enjoy that top level of confidence and support from their SC. And across functions, supply chain is acting like a polished gear wheel contributing to the marching forward of the whole business.
The anticipation as ‘the pigs are mine’ at the starting point, I had often, when I ran procurement/supply chain for projects (millions worth) and whole companies.
You could have too.
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