The Fight For Supply Chain Excellence

Every month, the Federal Reserve Bank publishes The Global Supply Chain Pressure Index. As shown in Figure 1, today, supply chain leaders are navigating their teams through the thirty-fourth month of disruption. The pressure is higher than in the 2007 recession as the teams face their twenty-fourth month of unprecedented inflation.

Figure 1. The Global Supply Chain Pressure Index

Demand volatility remains high. Traditional demand and supply planning processes are unequal to the challenge. The implementation of deeper optimization into antiquated architectures is also fool's play. It is for this reason, that I am continuing the work to define and prove the value of outside-in planning processes.

Update

We are in the process of documenting the Project Zebra pilots in Harvard Business Review (HBR) and in the Journal of Supply Chain Logistics and Procurement. I am currently working with OMP to continue the testing in a program nicknamed Project SPARK. In late February, I train the Kinaxis team on the methodology. To ensure that the efforts are independent, I kicked off an independent advisory team in January. If you are a business leader wanting to be a part of this work, please send me an email.

I am also continuing the work on how to build interoperability between supply chain networks. This share group meets on the first Friday of the month.

Finally, I am beginning work with Georgia Tech to analyze the impact of alignment in the supply chain and to take a hard look at how to drive value in the value chain. I would appreciate your help in taking our survey. This work closes next week.

As always, I appreciate your support of our work.