Daily Archives: October 8, 2007

Not all Gaps are Good! (Especially When Your Supply Chain is Involved)

Some Gaps sell clothing, and as long as that clothing is made and distributed in a socially responsible fashion and sold for a fair price, that’s probably a good thing, but some gaps identify gaping holes in your supply chain, and that’s not a good thing!

According to Getting ready for tomorrow’s supply chain in the Supply Chain Management Review, many supply chains have six significant gaps. These are:

  • Lack of Strategic Visibility and Alignment
    Supply chains are global – and visibility is key in Global Trade Management. Improving the performance of the supply chain requires an increased awareness of its operation and overall contribution to the corporation’s bottom line.
  • Lack of Supply Chain Models, including Risk Management and Optimization
    51% of companies don’t understand risk. 79% of companies are not even considering optimization. Decision optimization is the only way to optimize TCO and consider risks, and risk management is the only way to reduce your odds that a single snafu won’t occur and hit you with millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions in losses. Model your supply chain – and start now!
  • Inadequate Processes, including Measures, Information, and Integration
    Even innovation can be measured – but yet many companies don’t even capture, trend, and analyze basic operational and financial measures. Measure, find your inefficiencies, implement lean, and improve.
  • Insufficient Trust and Relationship Building Skills
    All I can say is that you need to:
    Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
    Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
    Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
    Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
  • Lack of Ongoing Frameworks for Supply Chain Architecture
    In some corporations, there are as many as four supply chains: the product chain that deals with the design, manufacture, and delivery of goods; the financial supply chain that follows the flow and ownership of money; the information supply chain that follows the flow, management, and ownership of information; and the physical supply chain that deals with the location of supply chain partners, the physical linkages that exist between partners, and the number/type of supply chain nodes. In order to take your supply chain to the next level, you need to take your ONE supply chain to the next level, not your four partial uncoordinated chains.
  • Insufficient Management Talent & Leadership
    There’s a talent war due to the crunch in available talent. It’s almost guaranteed that you will lose your top talent and that Got Talent? will be first question on everyone’s lips in the near future. Not only do you need to implement talent acquisition and management today, but you need to develop effective incentive strategies before it’s too late.