The contribution a flexible, agile and responsive supply chain can make to improved customer service and a company’s bottom line is now beyond argument. Study after study has proven so.
Of course, supply chain managers are not paid to merely understand the importance of such outstanding supply chains. They are paid to create them.
The question is how? How do we create the responsive, efficient, secure, supply chains that keep both customers and shareholders happy.
We’re all familiar with the typical imagery provided for corporate strategy and goal setting: The mountain that has to be climbed. The team leader out in front, heading the ascent, forever onwards and upwards. The goal always in sight, always as clearly visible as the mountain peak on a bright clear day.
But in reality, that’s just a Powerpoint slide that is used far too-often.
The typical supply chain manager’s world is one of increasingly global, increasingly complex supply chains. Where understanding the myriad customs regulations may actually be surpassed in difficulty by the challenge of understanding the customs and ethics associated with sourcing and transporting goods in countries very far away and very different from our own.
The supply chain manager’s world is one of volatile rates and surcharges that wreak havoc on transportation budgets and plans. Of increased security threats and demands that require multiple sourcing, distribution and transportation strategies.
And it’s a world where conflicting customer demands for service, and shareholder expectations for returns, are supposed to, somehow, work themselves into a sound supply chain management strategy.
If you think about it, effective leadership in such a reality has a lot less to do with mountain climbing and a lot more to do with cave exploration.
Cave explorers have an end goal, just like mountain climbers do. But their goal, unlike the mountain peak on a clear day, is not clearly visible in the darkness of the cave. Or in the confusion created by competing demands, volatile pricing, market changes and simply through operating very long, complicated supply lines.
Instead they need to have the inner confidence they are heading in the right direction.
At the same time, cave explorers have to accept that rockslides and cave-ins will likely force them to look for alternative routes -- just as effective supply chain leaders find alternative routes when supply chain labor troubles, security threats and infrastructure gridlock mess up the initial plans.
Whatever imagery you think most appropriate, the point is this. These are challenging times for supply chain management and they require leadership. We need supply chain managers whose accomplishments serve as models of new practices that can benefit the entire industry. Supply chain managers whose willingness to innovate serves as an example of the way things could be.
