Last week, I did a long overdo summary of the 2023 book “Breakthrough Supply Chains” by my friends Gene Tyndall and Christopher Gopal, and also Wolfgang Partsch and Eleftherios Iakovou. (See Is it Time for Breakthrough Supply Chains?)
I recently happened to take a look at my copy I had of this work on my bookshelf, and what really caught my eye was the sub-title: “How Companies and Nations Can Thrive and Prosper in an Uncertain World.”
Gilmore Says.... |
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| Ask the questions: Is ESG good for business, good for image, necessary for compliance, or a major cost item? (My note: the book is prescient here.) |
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Do we live in an uncertain world, both in terms of geopolitics and our supply chains? That’s putting it mildly, so I wanted to know more and share it with our readers.
Last week, I spent most of my column summarizing an impressive first chapter that tried to answer a basic question: What is supply chain really? And the authors do an excellent job of answering that question.
The remainder of the book takes a look at what it calls breakthrough thinking across various domains: demand, supply, information, sustainability, metrics and more.
At the end of each of these chapters, the book provides a series of recommendations for achieving breakthrough status for supply chain executives and policy makers. I think my approach will simply be to pick out a few favorites from each category.
Demand Management:
Focus the supply chain on the customer experience lifecycle and measure what the customer wants. Invest in technologies to understand the customer.
Focus on the information needed to make real-time and fast reaction to changing demand and conditions.
Managing Supply
Shorten supply chains and/or make them much more robust through a diversified portfolio of on-shoring, near-shoring and friend-sourcing.
Use simulation for scenario planning and what-of analysis (e.g., built a “digital twin” of the supply chain.)
Information
Treat data as a corporate and organizational asset, assure security, and mandate against keeping private data.
Do not accept the religion of having data real-time, all the time ecosystem wide easily. Instead, ask questions such as what will we do with such data, what are the benefits, etc.?
Knowledge (Business Acumen, Supply Chain Finance and Costs)
Integrate supply chain education into the core operations of the company.
Implement programs for role and job rotation to increase experience and competence.
 Risk and Resilience
Stop optimizing the perfect supply chain and instead develop flexible and resilient supply chain networks.
Pursue supplier mapping of the extended supply chain.
Sustainability
Ask the questions: Is ESG good for business, good for image, necessary for compliance, or a major cost item? (My note: the book is prescient here.)
Develop “fiscally astute” ESG strategies.
Measures that Matter
Start with “what do we measure and why?”
Have a few critical measures at every level.
Display metrics on-line and as near real-time as possible.
Again, the book has a number of such recommendations for each area. I just picked out a few that appealed to me.
In the concluding chapter, the authors list four guiding principles that form the foundation of breakthrough supply chain strategies:
1. Design End-to-End Supply Chains from the Customer Back and Suppliers Forward
2. Treat Data as a Corporate Asset, and Develop an Ent-to-End Strategy for Leveraging It
3. Collaborate across Functions and Supply Chain Partners
4. Manage Talent and Knowledge across the Organization
Sounds like good places to start to me.
“Breakthrough Supply Chains” is a detailed primer on achieving supply chain excellence in these dynamic and challenging times.
I recommend it.
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