What the Supply Chain Must Be

There are many things we like supply chains to be.  Popular examples are resilient, sustainable, and agile.  For some of those at the end of the chain, they’d simply want them to be dependable or on time, especially when it comes to deliveries.  And for many supply chain professionals, they’d want vendor supplies to be low-cost and zero-defects. 

From hearing so many of these words and from my professional experience,  I have narrowed down that supply chains must be:

• Visible
• Reliable
• Versatile
• Productive

‘Visible’ depicts how accessible and transparent operations are for observation.   It entails determining performance areas and setting up the means of monitoring & measurement. 

‘Reliable’ means how one fulfils demand in terms of completeness, timeliness, quality, and with no errors.  Some enterprises use the measure of perfect orders, which applies the same dimensions but based on orders or requisitions from customers.  Reliability goes one up in it addresses demand not only of end users but also the needs of each step in the supply chain. 

‘Versatile’ describes the ability to change as one chooses.  Versatility covers how fast one changes (agile), how one responds (adaptability), or how one stays the course (resilient). 

‘Productive’ is how much progress one makes versus the costs of doing so.   In the supply chain context, it is the efficiency of using the least amounts of resources in fulfilling demand. 

These four ideals best summarise all the buzzwords that organisations seek from supply chains.  They are a step up from my previous thoughts about the traits supply chains should have.

These ideals help us form the visions of what we want our supply chains to be.  Enumerating them, however, is the easy part.  The hard part is how to attain them.  Managers would be quite in the dark on where to start and how to lead their supply chains to such ideals. 

Supply chain engineers could help in making these ideals realities.  We just need to realise we need engineering as much as we need management when it comes to improving supply chains. 

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