A shipping manager of a medium-sized consumer goods company is dispatching deliveries one morning. One of the company’s trucks unfortunately won’t start. The driver says the battery is dead. The truck is loaded with products a customer ordered and is waiting to receive. The truck is twenty (20) years old, and the manager already secured top management approval to have it replaced with a new one in a few weeks. Should the manager buy a new battery, or should he transfer the products to another truck for delivery later in the day? Should he retire the old truck and wait for the new truck?
Urgent problems are issues which vie for immediate attention and resolution. A problem is especially urgent when a person of authority, i.e., owner, executive, or manager, perceives it as a cause for setbacks or threats to one’s operations or schedules.
The example of the truck with the dead battery is urgent as it threatens the schedule of the shipping manager’s operations. But what is the problem exactly? Is it the truck requiring immediate repairs or is it finding another way to deliver an order to a customer?
One should be careful before answering the above questions. On one hand, the problem is how the shipping manager could get the truck fixed and running. On the other hand, the problem is how to deliver the order to the company’s customer who expects it today. As the answer may seem obvious to some (delivering the order), other managers may perceive it otherwise (needing the truck to be fixed to avoid backlog in deliveries).
Urgency of a problem stems from the attention it seeks. Urgency, however, is not the same as importance. Importance depends on how a problem would affect performance towards meeting goals. A problem can be urgent but not necessarily important. And there are problems that are important but not necessarily urgent.
Then there is the degree of urgency. An urgent problem may be nothing more than a pressing matter, that is, one which could be resolved quickly, or it may be a full-blown crisis, one which causes or threatens catastrophe.
There are urgent problems, however, that could go far beyond the managers’ capabilities to solve. Such urgent problems would prompt managers to seek help. In the case of the broken-down truck at the shipping dock, if the shipping manager can’t get the truck fixed or couldn’t find another truck to deliver the customer’s order, the manager would be facing an urgent problem, escalating into a crisis. The urgent problem may no longer be about fixing the truck or finding another one; it may be about the lack of capacity to deliver pending orders. And if the urgent problem threatens the company’s topline sales target, then the manager may have gotten a crisis on his hands, in which he’d need help.
Managers turn to engineers to fix urgent problems in their systems & structures. Engineers, after all, are problem solvers by education and training. Hence, engineers are often observed overseeing complex repairs of equipment and recommending changes to designs of facilities or systems.
Managers, however, don’t usually turn to engineers when it comes to urgent problems in supply chains.
Several enterprises I had worked with were chronically in crisis stemming from similar scenarios as the example of the broken-down truck at the shipping dock. In many such cases, operations managers tried to solve the problems on their own. Most ‘successful’ solutions were nothing more than short-term remedies, in which the problems would re-emerge in the not too distant future. Others were downright failures, which led to outsourcing of the problematic operations or change of management, which brought higher expenses or losses to companies.
The common denominator in many chronic supply chain crises is that management does not turn to engineering expertise to solve their urgent problems.
Urgent problems, like all problems, could be best solved via a problem-solving methodology most engineers are adept at:
- Define problem
- Brainstorm solutions
- Outline criteria for solution selection
- Select solution
- Develop roadmap or plan for selected solution
- Develop detailed designs & plans for selected solution
- Implement solution
Whereas managers could do the methodology too, engineers are better equipped with in-depth technical expertise they learn from school and experience.
Some managers may argue that their experiences are just as in-depth as engineers. The jobs of managers, however, are about managing resources to perform toward objectives. Engineers’ jobs are about solving problems. Managers may have some expertise, but they would not have the same focus as engineers. Each respective profession has different sides of experience due to the variance between their foci.
Managers may also say that there are too few, if any at all, engineers with problem-solving expertise in supply chains. The rejoinder to this is many managers are reluctant to admit the need for supply chain engineering which discourages interest to the field. And there is an engineering field that does address supply chain problems: it’s called Industrial Engineering.
Urgent problems are not-so-welcome staples in supply chains. They occur in varying degrees from pressing matters to full-blown crises. Because executives have yet to recognise the need for supply chain engineering to help address urgent problems, enterprises suffer chronic setbacks and face ongoing threats from the supply chains they operate in.
Supply chain engineers, like other engineers, apply a methodology to solve problems. Their in-depth education and experience which is unlike what managers are trained in give them the expertise to address urgent problems.
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