SCM30: Top 10 Supply Chain Worries

In our ongoing series to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of the term “supply chain management,” Lori Smith posted the question:

What things do supply chain professionals worry about today that they didn’t worry about 30 years ago?  And what things did we worry about 30 years ago that we don’t worry about today?

First let’s talk about your TOP 10 list that illustrates what you DON’T

have to worry about today as compared to 30 years ago...

1. Your massive stack of green line paper doesn’t get delivered to your desk on time
2. Your secretary is away and can’t mail your supplier’s purchase orders to them
3. You stock status cards are filed incorrectly
4. You forget to update your stock status card and you order the wrong amount
5. There is a bottleneck in printing and you have to wait two weeks for a spec to be printed
6.  There are dangerous fumes coming from the manufacturing floor into the office
7. You are burdened with the overhead, cost and space required to support all aspects of your manufacturing
8. You have to be competent in everything related to manufacturing and selling your product
9. What is this new thing called MRP?
10. You don’t know how to promote and market your product globally

1. How can you support your organization with visibility and planning intelligence across your global footprint?
2. How do you maintain some level of control of your distributed and outsourced supply chain?
3. What more can you do to reduce latency across processes and increase your responsiveness?
4. How can you know sooner and capitalize on market events that drive increased market share penetration?
5. How are you going to differentiate yourself from your competition knowing that brand loyalty is a thing of the past?
6. How do you improve customer service and reduce costs at the same time?
7. How do you take processes like S&OP and modernize them to be more integrated and collaborative?
8. How do you involve your partners in a more collaborative and win/win business model?
9. How do you move from a silo approach to supply chain planning to a integrated end to end supply chain approach?
10. Do you have the right skills in your supply chain organization to effectively execute to a new vision?

Your worry list is rather daunting, but nothing is better than a good challenge. With the right people, processes and tools, organizations are extremely successful in meeting the challenges of the 21st Century Supply Chain.