Seasoned Leadership in Action™! An Interview with Michael Massetti, VP at Gartner!

Michael Massetti
       Michael Massetti, Gartner

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 Michael Massetti, Vice President for General Managers – High Tech, at Gartner.

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Double Inventory Turnover In 9 months!

“We are a Supply Chain Services Company,” I was told.

“If we are truly a Supply Chain Services Company, then why is our Inventory Turnover only at 7?”,  I asked.

I had just joined the company and in studying their financial performance it stood out to me that if we were truly a Supply Chain Services company then having only 7 Inventory turns was extremely uninspiring.

We needed to be dramatically better at managing Inventory to convince ourselves, and our customers, that we were a trusted and leading Supply Chain Services partner.  Could we double inventory turnover?

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How Cultural and Communication Barriers Affect Business!

This Cultural and Communication Barriers study was part of a Supply Chain MPS focus on Lake Erie College in Painesville, OH.  LEC is building a supply chain segment of its curriculum, and the first class is “Special Topics in Supply Chain’ led by adjunct professor Ron Emery.

The class is an exploratory class looking at all the various problems in Supply chains today and why they pose such a problem to the economy.  

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Spend Aggregation Obstacle Course for Procurement!

The theory is simple!  If you can increase spend levels through centralized spend aggregation across entities then you increase your leverage in negotiations. This leverage should translate to lower costs and better terms and conditions.  But there is a spend aggregation obstacle course to be overcome first.

These entities may be different departments or facilities within your own company. They may be different companies under common ownership. They may be disparate companies within an industry. Or they may be unrelated companies spanning many industries.

The benefits seem clear. So why is there so much resistance when it comes to trying to aggregate spend across these entities?

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Supply Chain Investment Challenges – Real and Imagined!

Everywhere you turn there is talk of a lot of very exciting technologies requiring Supply Chain investment.  The Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), Drones and Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Analytics are front and centre.

And all of these technologies have applicability for the Supply Chain in every business and in every industry around the world.   The Digital Supply Chain vision is within our line of sight.

But most companies are still working with the same, manual, non-automated Supply Chains that they have had for at least the last decade.  And they will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.  They are faced with challenges which are going to impede technology investments to advance their Supply Chains going forward.

What are these Supply Chain challenges?

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Our Top 10 High Performance Organization / Cultural Change Articles!

There are differences between winning teams and a high performance organization and losing teams. There are differences between winning companies and losing companies.

Some of those differences are induced by uncontrollable factors. And while every winning team does not win all the time, and every losing team does not lose all the time, there are controllable factors which determine the predominant direction of any organization.

You can create the culture and the high performance organization which allows your organization to be successful and win more than you lose. Here we present our 10 best articles to allow you to create the culture that will lead to having a high performance organization.

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Introducing Lean In Retail … Start in the Backroom!

The Retail company I had just joined was undergoing a massive transformation.  Fundamentally the new merchandising strategy was to curate a dramatically different set of products from that which was carried historically, but in addition to what was carried historically.  What did this mean for the backroom in every store?

This meant that an enormous number of the business processes had to be transformed to support the new product set because management of the new merchandise required much different capabilities in all aspects of running a retail company.  Not only did this transformation require new capabilities but it also required  improvements to productivity and efficiency throughout the company.  And overall this meant a need for cultural change.

I decided that I would introduce Lean process improvement techniques to this company.

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Our 2020 Top 10 List Part 2!

As we come to the end of our 4th year here at Supply Chain Game Changer we have realized some exciting milestones.

With over 4 million views across the Website, LinkedIn and Twitter our content has continued to be highly recognized. The site is viewed as a key influencer platform in the arenas of Supply Chain, Logistics, Procurement and Management. It is a must read place source for Professionals, Students and Experts alike. We have now published over 600 articles since our inception along with 3 Ebooks.

Continuing in our tradition of years past we present here our 2020 Top 10 List Part 2. As the globe continues to struggle with the Coronavirus pandemic we’ve written many several articles with respect to the pandemic and its repercussions and the future.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Here’s our list of our Top 10 articles of 2020, for the second half of the year:

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Be a Farmer … of People!

I’ve told this story many times, and still get laughs out of it every time I do. One time, as I was having lunch with a relatively new associate, he asked what I did for a living. I told him I was a farmer.

Now after he spit his food out and laughed insatiably for a few minutes, I explained to him what I meant.

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Pain Points – An Opportunity to Innovate and Expand!

Pain points are a part of business. They create opportunities to innovate, diversify and grow. Without customer pain points, there is no reason to be in business. Trading goods and services is as old as mankind itself.

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To Infinity and Beyond! Ultimate Principles for Creating a World Class Team!

SC Viral The Pandemic Diaries

The Supply Chain team was generally viewed as lacking in skill and capability by those outside the organization.  Customers and other internal functions viewed Supply Chain as a dysfunctional organization as evidenced by the poor Supply Chain performance metrics.  And external benchmarking placed our Supply Chain last amongst our competitors.  Going to infinity and beyond was a tall task to say the least.

Inside the Supply Chain organization there were a lot of very smart people.  But there was no trust, teamwork or synergy.   The culture was one more of complacency than of trend setting.  And there was a lack of inspired leadership.

Something had to change!

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The Digital Supply Chain Journey: Step 4 – Supplier Onboarding!

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.

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Seasoned Leadership in Action™! An Interview with Skip Boothby!

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.

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Process Based Inventory Turnover Improvement!

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.

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Our 2018 Top 10 List!

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!  

So here is our 1st Top 10 List of 2018…

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