Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate

Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate

Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate

Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate

Yesterday we discussed how Supply Is Where It’s At, as per a recent issue of Inside Supply Management, that Winning Together, in the last issue of CPO Agenda is Where It’s At, and that The Reward for Good Relations is worth the effort, as described in a recent issue of the European Leaders Network. Today we are going to talk about flow, strengthening the weakest link, and how collaboration helps avoid the cost of inefficency.

Over the last few months, Supply & Demand Chain Executive has published a pair of articles that together serve to emphasize the importance of collaboration in sourcing. In Applying Flow Principles to Collaboration, we are told that improving supply chain performance is improved by focusing on improving flows – material, information, and money – throughout the supply chain, which is no longer bounded by the four walls of the enterprise. Collaboration is thus paramount due to the absence of centralized control.

The article recommends the creation of trust and interdependency at three different levels to get past the “us vs. them” mindset that is all to common in today’s relationships and detrimental to overall success:

• operational: there should be a minimum level of coordination and visibility between stakeholders
• tactical: there must be a basic desire to create a win-win relationship where value is created through shared processes with expanded scope
• strategic: the highest level of collaboration where value is created results from the long term alignment of business strategy

In Supply Chain All the Way: Strengthening the Weakest Link, the notion that shared strategies, competencies, and trust, along with the sharing of information, can provide the edge required to ensure success in your efforts to aggressively capture market share and ward off competition in a tight market where success often depends on demand visibility and negating “the bullwhip effect“.

Finally, in Avoiding the Cost of Inefficiency: Coordination and Collaboration in Supply Chain Management from Knowledge @ Wharton, which tells us that supply chains in many industries suffer from an excess of products and a shortage of others owing to an inability to (accurately) predict product demand, you need to build a supply chain based on sound strategy, good consistent data, and empowered people and make sure it is comfortable with uncertainty and that this requires collaboration based on trust, not just information sharing. Furthermore, be sure to take a holistic view in your efforts since its the global optimum, not the local optimum, that counts.