Gilmore Says.... |
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But there is a lot more to Mesher than the Three V’s.
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My relationship with Klappich dates back to 2000, when he actually took my spot as the one and only supply chain analyst at a research firm called Meta Group, then the second largest analyst firm in the sector.
After turning my notice into Meta, the firm was in a bit of a lurch when it came to supply chain, and I actually took some client calls on a contract basis for a couple of months.
Klappich was heading marketing for a long forgotten WMS company whose name escapes me. In the way the analyst business worked then and largely still does, Meta considered if any current vendor clients might provide any good candidates, and I am told Klappich’s name emerged early on, and he was hired not long after.
As part of his on-boarding, Klappich came to my home in Ohio for a two day debrief on whatever I knew about the myriad vendors I had followed, supply chain trends and more.
 But in 2005 Gartner acquired Meta, and Klappich’s career and industry profile took off. He became inarguably the most knowledgeable and influential thought leader on Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), taking literally thousands of client calls over more than two decades, becoming a sought out speaker at conferences of all sorts, and authoring the highly influential annual WMS Magic Quadrant, among other endeavors, including building up a Garner team of an incredible four other analysts focused on WMS.
In recent years, Klappich has turned some his attention to research on warehouse automation generally and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) specificaly, where he has carved out a similar thought leadership position.
Any vendors briefing Klappich found out fast enough he was a real straight shooter, and that a hype approach wouldn’t get you very far.
Whoever takes on his role at Gartner will have some very large shoes to fill for certain.
So we now turned to Mr. Mesher, arguably the most influential supply chain analysts of all time, which he later parlayed into a highly successful business career as CEO of software firm Descartes Systems.
He was there from the beginning, convincing Gartner founder Gideon Gartner to launch a supply chain service, which Mesher led.
 And that ultimately led to The Three V’s of Supply Chain: Visibility, Velocity and Variability. The great simplification: you have to be good at the first two to well manage the third.
Most people believe that the Three V’s was first released as a Gartner Research note. Not true. The framework was unveiled during a Gartner conference in 1998. Somewhere in my files I have copies of those slides, with Mesher’s notes on the pages, which he sent me many years ago.
But there is a lot more to Mesher than the Three V’s.
One rumored tale: after Mesher had been highly critical of seminal supply chain software firm i2 Technologies, i2 founder Sanjiv Sidhu demanded a meeting. Mesher said Yes – if Sidhu would come to his then home base of Wisconsin and discuss matters over ice fishing, which is apparently just what happened.
He is a winner of CSCMP’s Distinguished Service Award, the industry’s highest honor.
Mesher is a board member of supply chain software vendor GAINS, which sponsored a breakout session at the Gartner conference, Mesher presented his thoughts from a new paper on the very different future he sees for supply chain planning – with the surprising introduction, fighting tears, that this would be his last public article or presentation -for reasons not clear.
There is so much more to Mesher’s career- maybe soon I’ll do full treatment.
Dwight Klappich and Art Mesher – two of our greatest thought leaders saying farewell.
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