Supply Chain Fundamental Rethinking

In the days of absence of real time data, many Supply Chain decisions were probably taken late and quality of decision making could have been a challenge. So the emergence of the need for real time data which probably makes data virtually available any time and all the time. This probably is expected to improve the quality of Supply Chain decisions. I meet a lot of professionals and during the conversations what I realize is the probability of "Missing the forest for the bushes" has also increased.  I often remember the case of an Equity investor of the bygone days. He probably used to see the data of his shares only once a day that too with a delay of one day (As in the old days the share prices data used to get printed in the news papers which got delivered next day morning!). Many a times he used to refer to a delayed data set to make his purchase or sell decision. Also his precision of exact price to buy or sell never got executed. The number of touch points in the ...

While no Supply Chain professional likes Supply Chain variations, in reality Supply Chain variations is the only certain event of a Supply Chain. Supply Chain variations should be viewed positively to make the most of them. I personally believe that a system which is stable for a long time develops fragility. Over a period of time the basic immune system to handle variations gets completely eliminated hence when the variations occur, the Supply Chain system is not equipped to handle the variations. So some level of variations in Supply Chain is actually good. They keep the system well greased and oiled. Predictability kills and probably does it faster. As a Supply Chain professional if variations have occurred, I think, it gives a great chance for the professional to go back to the drawing board & redesign. e.g. If, in your Supply Chain, you never had shortages of material, it indicates a great Supply Chain for a practitioner. But for me, it represents a Supply Chain where un...

The need to offer higher variety to end customers is leading enterprises to design larger number of finished products. With customers expecting shorter conceive to commercialize times, the Design department is under continuous stress to keep the idea to commercialize life cycle to its shortest. Under those circumstances, ideally speaking, if Design department has re-utilizable knowledge assets, it is of great help. Every design doesn't need to start from scratch. This being implied in organizations, Design department has its own knowledge assets which it refers to for designing the product. What needs to be further emphasized is the integration of Supply Chain knowledge assets can be the only source for the enterprise to successfully commercialize the product over its life cycle. Else, typically what is observed is that Supply constraints in the growth stage of product create a bottleneck to achieve the full sales potential of the product. During that stage, unfortunately, the Su...