Monthly Archives: May 2016

One Hundred and Seventy Years Ago Today …

Marked the first publication of the Cambridge Chronicle, the oldest surviving American newspaper. This is a very long time for a publication to survive. A very long time. Especially when many publications in today’s internet age only last a few years. Even the Red Herring ceased print publication in 2007, less than fourteen years after it was founded. (There was a time when it was as popular, if not more so, than Wired, an internet age publication that actually survived the internet age, but which still is only 23 years old.)

Even the New York Times did not start until five years later (and celebrates it’s 165th birthday on September 18 of this year). This blog, while the second oldest surviving independent blog in the Supply Management space (at 10 years), is just a blip when compared to the Cambridge Chronicle. Let’s hope that digitization does not wipe these publications out because ad-sponsored journalism is not really journalism at all. (When even South Park knows the danger of ad-funded “journalism”, you know something is very, very wrong.)

Infrastructure Sustentation 12: Airlines

Airlines are sometimes the most unpredictable of the infrastructure damnations. Postal services failures can be overcome with private carriers. Road closures can be overcome with longer detours. Port closures can be overcome by routing to alternate ports and trucking for longer distances. But when airlines fail, especially when all airlines are unable to serve a region, what do you do. Send a zeppelin? (And when was the last time those great balls of fire just waiting for a spark were used?)

The reality is that airlines are subject to a host of threats that can shut them down at a moment’s notice including, but not limited to:

  • Environmental Hazards

    planes can’t fly through hurricanes, tornados, or tsunamis; they can’t fly when the air is filled with volcanic ash (that will choke up an engine); they can’t land on water or thin ice); etc.

  • Geopolitical

    embargoes, disputes, and wars can close down a zone for an extended period of time

  • Labour

    worker strikes can take an airline down for an extended length of time

And even if this doesn’t happen, there’s still the risk that:

  • AirFreight can skyrocket over night.

    It’s not only ocean freight that can increase 20% or 30% almost overnight, air freight can too (especially when fuel costs skyrocket)

So what can you do?

Minimize Dependence on Air Freight

Yes it’s nice to get things overnight, but with proper supply chain planning, do you really need things overnight? For the bulk of enterprise and consumer goods, the answer is no. And with ocean freight able to get things across the ocean in as little as 23 days, that should be fast enough for most needs.

Have a Backup Plan

Have a backup airline, a backup departure point, a backup arrival point, plans to rail/truck the cargo to backup departure and destination points, and worst-case ocean or land backup plans for at least part of the journey if airlines shut down in a region due to another volcanic eruption.

Get Your Own Cargo Jet (Fleet)

As long as planes can fly, you can have more control. This isn’t a solution for anyone who doesn’t do a lot of air freight, but if you do, just like building your own power plant may soon be a necessity, so may be controlling your own air fleet.

Economic Sustentation 04: Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z

Talent is supposed to be Procurement’s salvation, so why are:

  • Generation X, born between the early 1960s and the early 1980s,
  • Generation Y, born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, and the
  • Generation Z, born between the early 2000s and the present day

an economic damnation? As was discussed in societal damnation 50 on talent, talent is required to keep your supply chains moving. People are required to enter the data to keep the information chain moving, to move the money to keep the financial chain moving, and to move the goods that keep the physical chain moving. And the majority of this talent is a workforce between the ages of 20 and 55, who will have been born between 1960 and 1995, and thus will primarily be composed of Generation X and the Generation Y Millennials, and, as Generation X begins to retire en-masse, Generation Z will begin to enter the workforce. So, not only is talent a damnation, its a damnation that comes in three different flavours.

Generation X

Generation X wants stability, fair pay, a great pension plan, flexible hours, time-off to help good causes, good healthcare, and career development.

It’s a tall order if you’re working for a multi-national organization with fixed benefit programs defined in the 1990s — focussed primarily on privately managed pensions, healthcare, and ten year old pay-scales. This is good for a small percentage of the workforce — but if they have kids or grand-kids, fixed 9 to 5 hours every day, no exception, doesn’t work. If the organization believes the best way to help the community is to just donate cash, and the workforce can’t volunteer their time as well, they’re out. And so on. And some of these requirements are at odds with:

Generation Y

Generation Y wants unique opportunities, work-life balance (and more vacation than the mandatory 2 weeks), social responsibility, and mentoring.

The organization probably has decent unique opportunities for those it feels can handle them, as well as some mentoring for people on the fast-track, but that’s it. Generation Y wants responsibility and trust, and wants the mentoring and education so that it will be worth of the responsibility and trust.

Generation Z

The beginnings of generation Z are just beginning high-school. And whereas Generation Y grew up in the information age, Generation Z is growing up in the communication age where not only is technology ubiquitous, but communication technology is ubiquitous and just about every Generation Z is growing up with a smartphone were they can call, text, and e-mail 24/7. And while we don’t know what they will want from a job perspective, we do know that they will want to be connected to their friends and colleagues 24/7 — just not necessarily for work purposes.

So how do you balance all of these competing requirements? You adapt. And you focus on commitment, not fixed hours. Results, not process. Team, not silos.

And then understand the costs of what your employees are asking for vs. the opportunity costs of not offering a few extra benefits to your employees. For example, how much does an extra week of vacation cost versus the results a top Procurement Pro can bring through additional organization cost savings. Does it really matter if the employee works 9 to 5, especially if they need to negotiate with a supplier half a world away at 11 pm. How much does better healthcare really cost? And what about an extra week to allow your employees to volunteer for good causes? The energy and pride could inspire them to work even harder and achieve even more lofty goals when they return to work.

The reality is, most of what talent will ask for costs very little relative to the value that talent can bring your organization. Especially when a top employee can push a hard 3% savings straight to the bottom line on 10M, 100M, or even 1B of spend. And if we didn’t have the situation where only 1 in 7 American adults were competent in math (as per societal damnation 45 on lack of math competency), the math would be obvious. Give in to every reasonable request, make them happy, and realize savings of 3X to 30X their total fully burdened cost.

FusionOps, Supply Chain Intelligence in the Cloud

FusionOps, a supply chain intelligence company that recently raised 25M, was founded in 2005 in Sunnyvale, California (the birthplace of Ariba) to automate ERP-based business processes (like direct materials Procurement and supplier collaboration) that could not be effectively accomplished using the stand-alone sourcing and procurement solutions of the day. However, around 2009, they switched directions and started amalgamating “big data” from ERP, MRP, and other Supply Chain and Supply Management systems in an effort to extract actionable intelligence for their clients.

As part of this evolution, they realized that in order to amalgamate the data that was required to compute metrics that would lead to useful, actionable insights that would guide enterprises in cost reduction, efficiency improvements, and customer service improvements, they would have to extract “big data” from a MDM solution. But most companies do not have a MDM (master data management) solution, “big data” scientists to work on the data, or the know how. As a result, FusionOps realized that they had to focus on “big data as a service” though a “supply chain intelligence cloud” which provided their clients with the metrics and models they need for diagnostic, predictive, and even prescriptive analytics.

The FusionOps solution s a pure SaaS-based solution with an open API that can be used to integrate with any supply chain / supply management solution that can import or export data. Out-of-the-Box it can integrate with over a dozen platforms including SAP, Oracle, Infor, JDA, Microsoft Dynamics, IBM, IFS, Kinaxis, and QAD. The solution is implemented as an application suite that combines S&OP, Procurement, Finance, Inventory, Quality, Production Planning, Sales, and Customer Service data into a cohesive whole across 50+ built-in models that cover over 1,000 KPIs across the inbound, internal, and outbound supply chains.

From this data, the platform can create customized reports, dashboards, and even infographics, which can be easily extended, modified, and enhanced by the user. This makes it easy for the system to be used for day to day tactical operations planning, reporting, executive briefings, and strategic planning. Many of their larger clients use the system in C-Suite briefings and Board briefings, as the reports and graphics can be configured to use company colours and templates.

For a deep-dive on the solution — including the three-main dashboard, report builder, and reporting solutions — check out the doctor and the prophet‘s deep dive over on Spend Matters Pro (membership required) which will dive into the strengths, weaknesses, and unique capabilities.

Geopolitical Sustentation 31: China and the New Silk Road

As per our damnation post last year, as part of it’s Grand Strategy, China has recreated the Silk Road, which has been active since November 18, 2015 when the first train left the city of Yiwu in Zhejiang province for a warehouse complex in Madrid, which it reached on December 9th. And it’s not going to stop until it crosses all of China and connects the entirety of Europe and Asia.

And when we say it’s not going to stop, we mean it. As per an article on Forbes on January 21, 2016 on how China is Moving Mountains for the New Silk Road – Literally, they won’t even let mountains get in the way. Four years ago, the entirety of the downtown Lanzhou New Area (LNA) was hundreds of mountaintops, which have been removed to make flat land for development. That’s right, they cut down mountains. In North America, it’s sometimes a massive undertaking just to flatten a few hills for a flat highway. They brought in the equipment and manpower to flatten mountains! If that doesn’t show you how serious they are about trade domination, I don’t know what will.

China is in the midst of implementing its OBOR (One-Belt, One-Road) initiative that will facilitate the creation of a gargantuan network of new highways, rail lines, logistics and industrial zones, pipelines, power plants, sea ports, and even entirely new cities that will stretch from East Asia to Western Europe, span over 60 countries, and impact over half of the world’s GDP, putting an end to US dominance once and for all. (The OBOR initiative also has a sea route, the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, that goes through the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean, which also connects China to all of Africa (and the Middle East), giving them access to the entirety of 3 of the 6 populated continents and 6/7ths of the world’s population!

China is not only an emerging economy, it is the emerging economy that will soon be powering, directly or indirectly, almost 2/3rds of GDP when the silk road is completed and it has it’s hooks across 3 continents.

And, as we said in our damnation post, China is about to become your upstream as well as your downstream supply chain. You have to abandon your old view of the world, accept this reality, and start preparing for it. It doesn’t have to be the damnation that causes your undoing. It can be your salvation. Your choice.

So how do you prepare for it?

1. Learn Mandarin

Chances are your China partners will speak better English than you will speak Mandarin, but any attempt to seriously learn their language will be seen as a sign of respect and good faith and go a long way in negotiations. And even if you aren’t the negotiator, you will be able to communicate with almost 1 Billion native speakers. (That’s roughly twice as many native English speakers.)

2. Model your source-to-sink Euro-Asiatic supply chain.

Don’t just model the inbound supply chain, model the outbound too – and when you do your network design, strategic sourcing, and logistics models, try to find the best locations for storing inbound and outbound materials and products, for manufacturing to take advantage of a strong network design, and to minimize import/export/FTZ requirements and logistics network length. Long gone are the days when you are sourcing from China to sell in the US. Now you are sourcing from China to sell to the world, China included, so why manufacture in Malaysia to ship back to China. You need to take your supply chain and sourcing optimization to the next level. (Which is something the Six Samurai can help you with from a sourcing perspective.)

3. Treat your Big China Suppliers as Strategic Partners

Even if you are convinced they don’t understand your business model, the American marketplace, and the global consumer and even if you are convinced that their only goal is to rip you off at every turn (because you are paranoid or your golf course buddy found one of the scammers, which there are in every country), they know their local market and their own preferences better than you. And even if China is not a market today, if your company needs growth, chances are it will have to be tomorrow and you will need their guidance, and possibly even their innovation capability. So get ahead of your competition in their books.

Now, more will be required, but this should put you on the right track, er, road. The silk road. Which will again be the centre of global trade.