What should be the chief responsibility of a Supply Chain Manager?

It has been of great interest to keep visualizing & drawing the changing landscape of supply chains. The movement from static to dynamic to chaotic has led to process changes in Supply Chains. Aspiration to reach more customers have change the networks of many from being single country to internationalized coupled with complexity of increased players in the supply chain. Evolution of Efficient Customer Response (ECR) needs have reduced the buffers in the form of time &inventory with practices like Lean. With technology enabling the performance of modern day supply chains, its of great interest to wish for nothing less than optimal performance.

While the structural, infrastructure, process & practices of any supply chain try to meet the contemporary requirements of that stage of market, wonder if the current state of the supply chains have the competencies & skills of the Supply Chain Managers match the demand of the role? In Supply Chains we know all that is important is not critical but is that the case with the practicing Supply Chain Manager. 

In the current industry it looks like planning to expediting & resulting fire fighting are the gamut of activities that the manager performs against a measurement system which draws itself (hopefully) from the key business outcomes expected for the period. While business themselves are grappling with mammoth of change in the environment (i mean the demand &supply environment) which leads to heightened risk, it seems the supply chain managers are still looking at planning, execution & expediting as their chief responsibilities. 

In my opinion, all Supply Chain Managers must be practically trained to 'visualize' risk. In a recent study published there are more than 200 current and emergent risks that may have an impact on supply chains. Furthermore, industry data shows that 85 percent of global supply chains experienced at least one disruption in the last 12 months. 

It is time to make 'Supply Chain Risk Management' at the chief responsibility of the Supply Chain Managers. 

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