Strategic Supply Chain Management - Supply Chain Online

FOREWORD
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doing so. How much more difficult is it, then, to decide on the true basis
for competition.
If developing and documenting a strategy represent a challenge, the
next tough step is to develop a supply chain strategy that integrates with
both the product strategy and the marketing strategy. When these three
are aligned, a company can expect to generate additional revenues during
the product life cycle, deliver superior customer response, and operate
from a lower cost base than competitors. The authors talk about becoming
adaptive—a much-needed capability driven not just by changes in the
customer base or by competitors but also by the need to integrate strategies
internally.
In the second core discipline—developing an end-to-end process
architecture—we recognize that many companies (again exemplified by
the cases in this book) have made great strides to achieve what the authors
have identified in Chapter 2 as “simplicity.” This has been especially true
in corporations with a long industrial past and with a global footprint as
they have simplified their processes in order to be competitive.
As we look at future challenges, we can identify product and service
proliferation as a driver of cost and inefficiency in many companies, yet
frequently there is no ongoing management process in place to contain
this phenomenon. Perhaps the absence of an integrated strategy makes
management of proliferation impossible for many companies.
What are the skills that will be needed to manage the supply chain of
the future In Chapter 3 the authors have given us frameworks and examples
for the third core discipline—designing your organization for performance.
This is an area of great challenge for both supply chain and human
resources functions, for it is only in recent years that we have seen companies
really tackle this topic seriously. Until recently, supply chain organization
design simply was a case of putting previously disparate operational
functions under single-point accountability and leadership. Many companies
have established at least a baseline supply chain organization and have
seen it settle and mature, but there is much more to do to develop the supply
chain organization of the future. How will you identify the next generation
of skills that will be required to develop and manage the infinitely
more complex and more rapidly changing supply chains of the future
What will those skills be How will they be acquired or developed How
much should you outsource without “thinning the core” These are some
of the critical questions that must be answered.
In Chapter 4, on the fourth core discipline—building the right collaborative
model—the authors rightly bring to our attention that the emerging
practice of supply chain collaboration has failed in many cases to deliver