As the following image from the AbleBrains blog indicates, at every single step:
Because if you don’t, yours will be the company that sees its supply chain get a lot leaner — fast. Consumer confidence may be rising, but discretionary spending — with the rising cost of food, clothing, and fuel — is falling. It’s not a good time to be in an optional CPG category — so you better make sure everything that you do is about the customer.
Like microchip fabrication and other complex engineering tasks, the supply chain is full of uncertainty. The best way to handle uncertainty is to deal with it up front, instead of trying to sweep it under the rug in the misguided hope that if the corners of the rug are stapled down, it won’t escape and manifest as a supply chain disruption. So how do you attack uncertainty head on? You approach it like an engineer.
A recent blog post on the HBR blogs on “how engineers manage uncertainty” had some great advice on how to handle uncertainty like an engineer.
Even if everything is going okay, and especially if everything is going well (as good fortunes never last), it is important to stress-test the supply chain strategy on a regular basis. If the weaknesses in the supply chain are not uncovered before a supply chain disruption occurs, it could mean the difference between a minor hiccup and a major disaster that shuts down production for a week and costs the organization millions of dollars in losses.
The weaknesses will only be uncovered if the organization is asking the right questions. After all, as Peter Drucker has warned, the most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers; the truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions. If the right questions are not being asked of the supply chain strategy, there’s nothing to stop the organization from taking the wrong fork in the yellow brick road and ending up lost in the jungle instead of back home in Kansas.
So what are the right questions? That’s a good question in and of itself, but thanks to Robert Simons, the Harvard Business Review and a recent article on how to “Stress-Test Your Strategy”, it’s one that is fairly easily answered as the right questions to start with are the seven counterparts to the seven questions every business should be asking at the strategic level. More specifically, the seven questions that should be asked to test your supply chain strategy are:
Manufacturing Myopia can be defined as a narrow vision of future potential, [generally] leading to formulaic cost-cutting, layoffs, loss of competence, and decline. It’s a state of affairs that is becoming more and more common in North American manufacturers, but it doesn’t have to be in your future.
The fundamental problem, as pointed out in a now classic Strategy + Business article on Manufacturing Myopia is that manufacturing strategies — decisions related to siting, designing, and running factories — are often the same as they were 10 or 20 years ago. Despite all of the so-called program advancements — such as “TQM” (Total Quality Management), “lean production”, and “Six Sigma” — manufacturing, for the most part, has not kept up with the times. Strategies have been contained to the functional or plant level, disjoint from the enterprise-wide strategy and cut-off from the executive decision makers, and, as a result, the manufacturing focus has narrowed over time to the point where competence has atrophied with respect to the rest of the business. This has compelled many companies to focus on cost cutting to the point of irresponsibility instead of (fundamental) process innovation.
So how do you prevent manufacturing myopia? According to the authors, you start by building awareness as the only “cure” is 20/20 vision that ties together an understanding of manufacturing costs and means. Companies have to sharpen their own ability to see their operations more clearly and redesign them more flexibly as they need to acquire the ability to produce higher-quality goods at lower prices in a flexible manner as this is a key component of their long-term competitive strategy and a central, dependable part of their identify.
In order to build this awareness, a company needs to master the following four dimensions:
And, most importantly, as per the article, the company needs to have patience. While the benefits of a manufacturing transformation should start to materialize within eighteen (18) to twenty-four (24) months, as the article indicates, after production technology is replaced it could take two-to-three (2-3) years before the capital investment bears fruit in the the semiconductor sector, five (5) years in major manufacturing, and as much as twenty (20) years in process industries such as petrochemicals and electricity production. Additionally, to improve processes, companies have to train entire plant communities in dozens of different tools and techniques and completely different ways of working. All of that consumes time and resources.
It’s a tall order when you think back to the classic Ford production line that most plants still work on — one path, one job, and one product — but it’s what is needed if plants are to truly enter the 21st century. I highly recommend that you check out the Strategy + Business article [again] on Manufacturing Myopia. I bet your supply chain could use it.
In a recent post over on the HBR blogs, Steve W. Martin describes “a salesperson’s seven deadly sins”. Many sales people indulge in one or more of these sins, and you can use this to your advantage to avoid negotiating a deal you don’t want to make (as some sales people won’t stop calling until they get a meeting since their mantra is to “prospect, prospect, prospect until they have a purchase order or a restraining order”).
In the order they were presented by Mr. Martin, here is how to use the seven deadly sins of sales people to your advantage.
Garrio (Chattering):
For whatever reason, some salespeople just can’t keep their sassy mouths shut. If you know that you don’t want what the salespeople are selling, but can’t get out of the meeting / call (because your supervisor bound you to it), you can avoid getting to the “negotiation” entirely by asking a question every time the salespeople come up for air. This will keep them talking until time’s up when you can bid them good day (and good riddance).
Gula (Gourmandizing):
Some salespeople are more interested in the meal than the sale. If you know a bit about food, you can avoid a discussion of the salesperson’s product or service entirely by suggesting a fine establishment unfamiliar to the sales person where you will spend the meal discussing the restaurant and the food. Plus, the sales person will be happy because he “bonded” with you.
Lentus (Inactivity):
Some sales people are way too focussed on the here and now, to the point where they’ll ignore the future to their significant detriment. If you don’t want them bidding on a big contract next quarter, but don’t want to upset them because you want to continue to do business with them where other products or services are concerned, you can easily distract them by diverting their attention to a contract that is closing sooner that they can bid on.
Oblivio (Oblivousness):
Salespeople often have no clue who does and does not have buying authority and think that a manager is a manager is a manager. If you want to divert their attention or get them off your back, you can keep them tied up for months by redirecting them to another employee of “equal” rank who is interested in their product (but who will take months to decide such product is best), but who ultimately has no buying authority. When the salespeople ultimately finally find out that Manger of Quality Assurance has no spending authority, they might just give up completely and go away.
Ieiunitas (Shallowness):
Some salespeople don’t know their product or service well enough to answer a simple question. A great way to get them off your back is to ask a dozen detailed questions that they have no shot of answering without having to go to engineering / service delivery (whose priorities will not be the same of the salesperson) and to indicate that it will be impossible to proceed until the questions are answered in detail.
Incomptus (Presumptuosness):
Some salespeople will happily assume what they don’t know in order to make “progress”. This can work to your advantage if you suggest that you require a key feature, on the future roadmap that won’t be completed for at least a year, in such a way that they presume you won’t go forward without that feature.
Ignarus (Ignorance):
Some salespeople don’t realize the importance of a contact that tells them what is happening behind closed doors, that defends them when they are not around, and that disseminates propaganda on their behalf. Other salespeople will believe anyone who says they are on the salesperson’s side. If you’re willing to stretch the truth and make lies of omissions, you can convince the sales person you are fighting a losing battle tooth-and-nail on their behalf and that the best thing they can do is stay away and be patient while you slowly wear your peers down while you are, in fact, doing absolutely nothing. After all, ignorance is bliss!