Phasing out Supply Chain, Phasing in "Demand Sensed Network Delivered"

Supply Chain is at a Strategic Inflection Point. It's not going to suffice to just make tactical changes to the existing way of perceiving but a fundamental and radical change in way of thinking is what I think is the need.

Many a times in the life of an organisation or an individual, a deep fundamental understanding of what he or she does everyday has to be changed. This is not a change in "jargon" so that old jargon is replaced with new one without changing the underlying premises and beliefs. Supply Chain I would imagine is at that cross road where, to sustain in future, Supply Chain Leaders have to make an "non-elastic" change .

Supply Chain as a term for me has an implied meaning of being a "Chain which focuses on Supply(ies)." The major issue here is if we go down the level of the belief system of a practitioner, "Chain" means inter-linkages with lesser degrees of freedom. Each link of the chain is tightly integrated with the preceding and succeeding link such that the freedom of movement available with each link is minimal. To add to this, even if one link of the Chain breaks, the entire movement comes to a standstill. The second term of the word, Supply Chain, is Supply. This creates a working atmosphere where practitioners are moulded to keep the "Supply" going. The focus is "Supply", in presence or absence of actual demand but always in presence of "planned" demand. 

21st Century way of working will need a change from being "Supply" to "Demand" and "Chain" to "Network". This merely can't be change in terminology without Supply Chain Leaders fundamentally working to change the "DNA" of their team. It must be a way of living. 

Forecasting to Demand Planning to Demand Management has been the journey of Supply Chain so far. All this can be replaced with Demand Sensing. With Supply Chain Data Analytics and improved transparency with channel partners, the planning based Supply will need to be replaced by Demand Sensed Order Fulfillment.


Network Delivered may mean a structural change to existing Supply Chain which looks at channel partners as custodians of inventory and replace them with roles of value addition. Imagine a Passenger Vehicle dealer also assembling the vehicles or a FMCG distributor receiving shampoos in containers of 100 or 1000 litres and repackaging it into bottles or sachets based on the actual demand in the last leg of Supply Chain.

I think the phasing out of Supply - Chain way of working and phasing in Demand Sensed Network Delivered way of working needs to start sooner than later.