Is your supply chain team working ON your supply chain, or merely IN it?

The APICS Dictionary, 13th edition, defines supply chain management as “the design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of  creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronising supply with demand, and measuring performance globally.”

Ask yourself, how many of these have you and your team progressed this week, this month, or even this year?
Are you moving forward?
We all want to see our supply chain teams busy, even sweating a little.
While the team’s busy they’re productive.

…or are they?

Ask yourself, how many of these tasks are keeping your supply chain team busy?

DEMAND TASKS

• Customer orders received by phone or email?
• Customer service type the orders into the system?
• Phone calls or emails advising of changes to dates and/or quantities?

SUPPLY TASKS

• Purchase orders hand-written or printed, scanned and emailed to suppliers?
• Phone calls or emails advising of changes to dates and/or quantities?
• Signing off purchase orders for payment approval based on a pile of three-way-matches?

LOGISTICS TASKS

• Phone calls or emailed excel-templates to carriers to arrange routine pickups/deliveries?
• Making phone calls to find out where your delivery is, and when it will arrive?
• Running your Stock Takes with…
  • multiple count teams and clipboards,
  • manual count sheets,
  • little colourful “don’t count me again” dot-stickers,

For some, this is a typical busy day in the life of their supply chain.
For others, there are more than a few tasks that are still part of their operation.
For a few, it’s a trip down memory lane.

GET BUSY BEING PRODUCTIVE

If you and your team are executing these tasks, then they are busy. But they’re not productive. They’re turning the wheels, but not moving things forward. The digital supply chain has freed teams of these tasks. The digital supply chain can free up your team. Free them up for what you need them to do. Free them up to be productive. Free them up to move forward - to hit all the elements of the definition at the top of the page, not one or two elements.

While your team is executing these tasks, they’re not working ON the supply chain. They’re not optimising the systems they use and the processes they follow. They’re stuck IN your supply chain - spinning wheels. Busy, but not productive.

MOVE FORWARD

You’re already digital savvy. You’re reading this on a digital device! You’ve used eBay and Amazon. The digital supply chain isn’t the domain of rich multinationals. It’s scalable, it’s  evolving and it’s now the customer’s expectation. It’s no longer a cost. It’s an investment in enabling your supply chain to deliver tomorrow.

Where can you start to digitise, or take what’s already digitised to the next level? What can you do tomorrow to get your team working ON your supply chain? When they’re working  IN it they’re improving. Improving the design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronising supply with demand, and measuring performance globally.

ULTIMATELY, IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU

Think of it another way. Your own performance review is always less than 12 months away. Start tomorrow towards making it a great conversation. A conversation where you and your team have broken from the past. You’re leading them in working ON the supply chain, not IN it. They’re not busy, they’re productive. You’ve moved forward.