The Top Three XII: Summary

Even though the analysts (Aberdeen and AMR) and vendors (Andy Monin and Greg Holt) are still recovering from ISM and other conferences, Tim Minahan and Vinnie Mirchandani are still globe-trotting, and Jason Busch is still catching up on ISM posts, I’m going to do an initial wrap-up. When more posts hit, I’ll update this post and add a comment.

So far, we’ve had the following great posts:

Author Post
Michael Lamoureux Culture, Complexity, and Visibility
Lisa Reisman Global Sourcing Savings Maximization, Volatile Commodities Management, and Savings Implementation
John Miller Slow is the New Fast, The 90-mile Rule, DIYS
Kevin Brooks Listen to Your Audience, Repeat Repeat Repeat, Keep it Simple
Doug Smock World Class Metrics, Cross-Functional Collaboration, and Value Engineering
Dave Stephens Cost, Complexity, and Compartmentalization
David Bush Adoption, Adoption, Adoption
Jean-Philippe Massin Live Spend Analysis, Best-in-Class Suppliers, and Change and Culture Management
Chris Jacob Abraham Forward: SCM 2.0

Supply Chain Talent

Closed Loop Supply Chain Management and Supply Chain Collaboration

Eric Hiller Design for … What?
Doug Hudgeon Dale Earnhardt
Charles Dominick Measurement, Benchmarking, and Skills
Randy Littleson Strategy, Strategy, and People
Haydn Jones Sustainability, Sustainability, Sustainability

Even though it looks like the posts are all over the map, one starts to see a common theme emerge – a three C’s theme in fact, even though not the three C’s proposed by Dave Stephens. The three C’s I see emerging are: Culture, Complexity, and Collaboration. Supply chains are global – they embrace all cultures, exist at various levels of complexity, and require a great deal of collaboration to pull off – especially if one wants to do it efficiently and cost-effectively. Not to say that all of the other points made aren’t valid – they are – but it seems that these three C’s will be center of tomorrow’s supply chain and any supply chain management 2.0 solution must address, and improve the handling of, these three C’s.