The foundations of any Digital Supply Chain is the real time, end-to-end electronic connectivity of every node and aspect of your Supply Chain. Unless your company is entirely self-sufficient this connectivity requires extensive and exhaustive Supplier Onboarding.
And this onboarding is not restricted to the first tier suppliers with whom you have direct contact. You must connect with second, third, and fourth tier suppliers, many of which you will often never have even heard of before.
And that is an enormous challenge, to say the very least.
At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action™” Interview series. The first in our Interview series is with Skip Boothby, a colleague and good friend for many years.
Skip Boothby is a tremendous Leader and Executive with phenomenal experience in running businesses and operations through every stage of their evolution. Skip’s background and insights are valuable for all of us to learn from and share.
Inventory management is a critical area for most companies. And breakthrough improvements require a process based inventory turnover improvement strategy.
Too much inventory, especially the wrong inventory, can negatively impact cash flow, return on investment, customer satisfaction, and profitability. Too little inventory, especially the wrong inventory, can result in lost sales, inability to delivery to customers, and also impact cash, ROI and profitability.
Despite these devastating and far reaching implications of poor inventory management too often this area is not given the respect and attention that it deserves. You cannot just wave a wand a wish inventory levels will be magically lower.
Brute force approaches will at best result in short term gains. In our experience the best way to systemically, and sustainably, optimize inventory is to take a process based inventory turnover improvement approach.
It’s been a tremendous start to our second year at Supply Chain Game Changer. Our goal has always been to share experiences and expertise, including our 2018 Top 10 list. In the first half of 2018 our readership continued to grow substantially over our first year, 2017. And we were selected as one of the Top 25 Procurement blogs in the world.
In 2018 we added video content and introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action” Interview series. For the purpose of this Top 10 List we have excluded all “Seasoned Leadership in Action” articles as we are not trying to promote a popularity contest amongst individuals. That being said the response to the Interview series has been absolutely outstanding.
We also continued to add more and more Guest posts provided by industry leaders. We have 17 new Guest contributors so far in 2018 on top of the outstanding roster of contributors who started with us in 2017.
As we end the first 6 months of 2018 we wanted to publish our Top 10 List, so far.
Thank you for your tremendous, ongoing support. If you haven’t subscribed yet please sign up! Subscribe Here!
“Global Process Excellence™” was to be the platform on which we would propel the company’s Operations upward toward Best In Class status. Our Call To Action objectives were clear:
We had a clear requirement to improve our profitability
We needed to respond to customer expectations for increased value and a consistent, exceptional customer experience in all Distribution Centres
We needed to lean out the operations and improve our productivity
We needed to create Best in Class capabilities
We needed to enable profitable growth on the back of an enhanced Operating model, capacity and capabilities
And we needed to unleash the tremendous experience and expertise that resided within our employees
Now we needed to formulate our Roadmap: the Approach, the Mandate, a set of Ground rules, and a process of Governance to bring together everything that would now be called Global Process Excellence™.
How many times have you seen new Management being brought into a company, only to see them leave and be replaced, through the revolving door, in a very short timeframe?
This happens a lot on Sports teams. Coaches and Players alike are replaced after a relatively short stint with no tolerance for poor performance.
I’ve seen it happen several times. Basically the CEO or Chairman gets rid of the entire Management team and brings in a new team. Within a couple of years the process is repeated. The entire team is replaced even though these people were considered saviours when they were brought in.
Does that kind of Revolving Door, or Turnstile, Management Strategy really work? Is it really a reflection of the performance of those being replaced or is it more a reflection of the poor leadership of those doing the replacing?
How many people make a New Year’s resolution to adopt a Lean program and “Lean” yourself out only to abandon it shortly thereafter?
One of the top New Year’s resolutions is to start exercising. In January the local gyms are filled. But by February those gyms are much emptier and many of those well meaning people are still at home.
What do you do when your Lean program at work suffers the same fate? How do you know when your improvement program needs to be improved?
Businesses have always been innovators. They know how to perfect their products, optimize supply chains, and grow relationships with customers. They’ve developed processes, tools, and strategies over their existence that set them apart from the competition. These change management tips and strategies have brought them success and made them who they are.
But when it comes to change management, the strategies that made them successful in the offline world do not apply to the new digital era. That’s because innovating a product, optimizing a single process, or seeking out a new relationship is not the same as introducing an entirely new way of doing things.
Many a project starts off with very lofty objectives. And with a lot of work and a little luck those desired results are often achieved. In every case those results usually have been achieved within a certain timeframe and with a lot of momentum.
Yet once you achieve those goals in many respects the energy and momentum which got you there may start to fade. Yet your work has just begun. The next question that always comes up is whether you can sustain, and further improve, those results.
Additionally if you are trying to drive Cultural Change and long term transformation after a while your initial project may become stale and your participants demotivated or distracted.
To avoid your project becoming “just another program” you need to proactively recognize when your project needs to be reinvented or rebooted to avoid irrelevancy and the back-sliding of your results.
At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action™” Interview series at Supply Chain Game Changer. This interview is with John Heffernan, Chief Supply Chain Officer at ModusLink.
I met John on my first day at ModusLink. He was presenting to the Board of Directors. John was one of the Global Operations Executives for the company. He had complete command of his facts, situation, direction and strategy. He was so knowledgable that his expertise and experience came shining through in everything that he said.
As John and I continued to work together we knew that we needed to make serious, game changing improvements around the world. John and I continued to positively challenge and build on each other’s ideas and thinking. This culminated in the deployment of a phenomenal program and the achievement of world class, industry leading results. We raised each other’s game to the benefit of all!
Cloud technology is the new norm in today’s digital world, with many organizations embracing its benefits for their businesses. With cloud technology, you can go paperless, have better data storage, access resources from anywhere in the world and more.
While it can help save business costs, transitioning to cloud technology is complex.
In the middle of our 5th year here at Supply Chain Game Changer we are proud to publish our 2021 Top 10 List. Here we are showcasing our 10 most popular articles for the first half of the year.
Since we’ve started we have amassed an extensive library of over 750 articles. There is something for everyone no matter what your interests, challenges and needs may be from one day to the next. And that fulfills our mission of sharing experiences and expertise for the benefit of all.
Still there is always more to right about to help our readers.
So let’s take some time to reflect, and look back on our 2021 top 10 list … so far!
Every day every individual, team, department, and company is faced with the need to make improvements. These changes, and the approach that each necessitates, fall along an improvement spectrum.
Some of these improvements are small and easily made. Others are herculean and overwhelming.
Some of these improvements are in reaction to problems or challenging circumstances. Others are preemptive and visionary.
Regardless of what situation is driving the need for change, change is upon you. Consistent with a situational leadership philosophy, different drivers of change require different approaches.
In this article we discuss the breakthrough improvement spectrum of approaches that you should deploy depending on what your specific situation merits.
The Supply Chain touches all of our lives whether it be in business or personally. No matter what industry you are in or are touched by, all involve the movement of goods, services, and information. So the most efficient functioning of the Supply Chain affects us all. And it affects us in every aspect of our lives whether we are consumers, employees, or business leaders.
With a career spent in Supply Chain I’ve seen many ways of performing the processes involved in managing the Supply Chain. Many of these processes are highly efficient. Yet many more are highly inefficient. Regardless, everyone strives to improve the way things are done. And every experience has been an opportunity for growth.
In this blog I’d like to share my experiences, and those of others, in improving, working in, managing in and being managed by the Supply Chain.
There have been some remarkable achievements and there have been some missteps along the way. However there are lessons to be learned and experiences to be shared in every case. And I hope that this learning and shared experience will be of value as you seek to improve the Supply Chain you are a part of.
On top of that we want to share anything and everything related to Leadership, Change Management, Technology, Procurement, Purchasing, Distribution, Logistics, and much, much more.
Overall Supply Chain Game Changer can serve you as a guide as you do your jobs and as you progress through your career. The issues and challenges that you face will be different for everyone on any given day. There is something for everyone in Supply Chain Game Changer.
Additionally I invite you to comment and send me content. By learning, not only from successes but from failures, we will all be better going forward. There is a wonderful world of people and experiences that we can all learn from.
So again I welcome you to the Supply Chain Game Changer™ blog.
EBOOK HERE
