When was the last time your Supply Chain ran smoothly?

When was the last time things in your Supply Chain went smoothly? 

It's pretty fair to say that Supply Chain is up there with the most challenging of departments within any company. It truly is a balancing act, the best way to describe those that help or manage the supply chain is that of a plate spinner, spinning hundreds of plates. 

Yes, you have a team helping to keep all the plates spinning but to add to the difficulty, imagine doing this in a storm, on top of a mountain, at night in the rain. Why in a storm a top a Mountain at night in the rain I hear you ask.  

Well, when it comes to supply chain, your totally at the mercy of changes outside of your control, demand variability, supply constraints, Economic issues, conflicts, weather this is the Storm. 

The complexity of the global supply chain is also a constant challenge, even the simplest of Supply Chain ecosystems have hundreds of trading partners, all influencing the end-to-end supply chain, this is the Mountain. 

You spend all your time in the dark, unable to see beyond the four walls of your operation, blind to issues happening all across the supply chain until they reach you, by which time you have little time to react. This illustrates spinning plates at night in the dark. 

And finally doing all this in the rain, the rain represents all of the other issues that get in the way of you running a smooth supply chain operation, internal system disconnection, an inability to utilise data to drive intelligent decisions, legacy systems in need of constant support, limited staffing power to manage the issues that need constant resolution, the list really does just go on. 

If you think it ends there it sadly doesn't, hence my point that Supply Chain is up there as one of the most challenging and stressful departments to work in.  

Given the above constrains and challenges, those in supply chain must deal with supply chain issues on a one-by-one basis, they must determine which issues require immediate action, versus those that must wait. That is no easy job, after all is hard to predict which issues if left unresolved will cause further issues down or up the supply chain. So prioritising which problems to solve is a challenge.  

Like waves at sea even the smallest waves can grow into giants, while they go almost undetected under your boat, for the boat behind you, it's grown, it might not be a problem for a few boats back, but eventually that wave will capsize someone, and that someone is your trading partner. The demise of them affects you.  

I once heard a Supply Chain Director describe their situation as having a thousand issues a day and only being able to resolve a few of them. The others they cannot get to in time and are so left in the hope they don’t come back to haunt them, and inevitably many will.  

There is hope however in the form of technology, we live in a world where technology has been developed to help us, we use it is almost every part of our lives, both professionally and personally.  

The reality is that the spectrum of challenges across the supply chain can be solved with a very simple notion and that is that you must stop seeing the supply chain as a chain but a network. A Network of companies all working together to support one another, after all your all working towards the same goal, to deliver a product as efficiently as possible at the lowest possible cost you and the consumer.  

Imagine a world where you and all your trading partners are connected, no matter where they feature in your end-to-end supply chain, imagine all data generated is connected and fused giving all a single view as to what is happening across the end to end, imagine when an issue occurs everyone see's it and can react in real time to limit the effect for all and resolve collectively.  

Well, this isn’t a pipe dream, this does exist and is called One Network, funny that.  

So, the next time you see one of your supply chain team, wish them luck, say kind words, buy them a beer, because trust me they have a very stressful job and unless they are on One Network, they will be suffering.  

From me to anyone working in supply chain, you have my upmost respect, and if I see you in the pub after a long hard day, the drinks are on me or if you prefer, we can go to a health spa and the first foul tasting smoothy is on me 😊.  

#supplychain #supplychainmanagement #supplychaincontroltowers #supplychaintechnology