How to get ahead in supply chain

In the 1967 classic parody of big business at the peak of America’s golden age, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, rule number one is “find a large company… at least large enough so that nobody knows quite exactly what the other fellow is doing”.

Sound advice, perhaps, for an era where essentially no information systems tied plans to reality, but a recipe for disaster in today’s connected world. Success in business now, especially for supply chain people, depends on knowing as much as possible about what everybody is doing.

Knowledge is power

The joke back then was grounded in reality, with factories tuned for long runs and warehouses loaded with inventory. Minimal competition from a still rebuilding Europe and a barely industrialised Asia left old-school supply chain people fat and happy in their well-demarcated silos. Mistakes were hard to pin on anyone in particular and success generally meant following orders from above. No more.

Today’s supply chain executive gets ahead by understanding customers, channels, networks and strategies – both within the company and when dealing with outsiders. The critical skills, in fact, are half old-school SCOR model type stuff and half modern business leadership. Data from our 2011 CSCO survey, shown in the chart below, indicates the range of skills and capabilities that are required to succeed now.

The war for talent

One of the most pressing challenges I hear about from supply chain and operations leaders is finding, developing and retaining top talent. On the one hand there is the problem of building world-class teams almost overnight in fast-growing new markets; on the other is the issue of how to assure strategic perspective and agility in home country organisations tasked with orchestrating far-flung networks of people and assets.

Practitioners who can run a top-notch S&OP process and yet still talk a bloody-minded engineer out of a costly design feature are rare and valuable. The best get poached away, unless they are given a chance to grow internally.

For some organisations, this challenge is seized and turned to their advantage. Lenovo, for instance, operates one of the most diverse and yet connected global supply chain teams I’ve ever worked with. General Mills recruits athletes and fosters breadth as well as depth of knowledge, always assuring a holistic view of supply chain’s value to the business. Raytheon has shown me a five-year plan for talent development that covers the waterfront in terms of cutting-edge skill sets.

These and other leaders are winning the war for talent by offering people a chance to get smarter faster, and to be recognised for their progress.

Beyond the classroom

Having attended the 24th annual Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) conference in Denver recently, I was privy to some brilliant analytical thinkers. But what really impressed me were the Practice Leaders’ presentations. Among these were Keith Holliday of Sonoco Products, Alex Brown of Xilinx, and Kimberly Clemenson of Amgen. The great thing about the session, which had been organised by Chris Tang of UCLA, was that these presentations were about half old-school SCOR material and half modern business leadership. My takeaway: practitioner insight is vital to getting ahead in supply chain.

SCM World has always been based on practitioner-driven content, which is why I’m here. Our new website, launched earlier this week, is specifically designed to make this kind of content easy to find, use and pass along to peers. The whole idea behind features like “company stream”, which shows what everyone else in your organisation is looking at, is that you’ll learn more by not only seeing but also by discussing real-world examples with real people.

One thing I personally love about this discipline is that most of you totally understand what happens when a customer tugs on the end of the supply chain. No one else in the business really gets this, which is why change management is such a big deal in supply chain.

Unlike the character in the 1967 movie, our success in business depends on making sure everyone knows what we’re doing and why.

Kevin O’Marah
Chief Content Officer
SCM World

Please contact me directly with any comments, questions or suggestions. I welcome your feedback.