Ellery's Essays

Industrial Engineers Don’t Need to be Certified

Many nations require engineers to be certified & registered before they can practice, or at least be recognised as authorities in their fields. Given that engineers, such as civil, mechanical, & electrical engineers, design & construct equipment & facilities which the ordinary public uses, it makes sense that governments insist engineers undergo extensive education & licensing.

Many of these same nations, however, don’t require industrial engineers to register or be licensed. Many people don’t recognise industrial engineers as true engineers. IEs are seen more as managers, hence, there’s no rationale to register IEs as engineers.

We, who are industrial engineers, have strived for legitimacy. We want to be recognised as engineers, not managers. We don’t really like the stereotype that IEs are nothing more than technical support for managers, that we are just timekeepers with stopwatches who simply measure how long workers finish their tasks.

Some of us turn to private professional organisations to attest to our industrial engineering expertise. We apply for memberships & certifications and boast these to prospective employers & clients. If we can’t get licenses from governments, we can at least get certifications from private groups to legitimise our IE backgrounds.

But what qualifies the private groups as the authority to legitimise IEs?

Universities hand out diplomas to graduating students after they had passed through curricula of classes taught by distinguished professors. We know the professors are qualified because they themselves were taught by previous academicians.

We recognise the authority of professors not only from their educational training, however, but also from their track records of research & insights. The best professors are ones who make discoveries, formulate daring theories, and eagerly educate us about them.

Many engineers have contributed their share of discoveries & insights. They introduced new ways to construct buildings, assemble machines, fabricate parts, invent new formulae, and find new sources of energy. We owe engineers a lot for the better standards of living they had brought to our societies.

We who are industrial engineers have also contributed our share of discoveries & insights. Somehow, for some reason, however, the same societies who appreciate engineers for their innovations, don’t seem to recognise our IE insights to the same degree.

Perhaps it’s because our IE discoveries seem more mundane, or unlike other engineering fields, invite controversies. IEs, unlike other engineers, put focus on the performance of workers in their workplaces; whatever ideas we bring forward, therefore, are subject to varying individual opinions. Some individuals, such as executives & labour union leaders, would bitterly disagree with IE findings about how well workers perform.

Many private groups don’t have peers who have sterling track records as those of university professors. Whether it’s because many IE experts aren’t equally recognised for their work or because there aren’t many IE professors is not the issue. Certifications from private groups with shallow credentials would not truly authenticate us as industrial engineers.

We IEs should do what the engineers did when they were also starting out more than a hundred years ago. We should be doing our own research and discovering new ideas. We should be hunkering down into our operations and relentlessly pursue solutions to problems. And when we do find those innovative solutions, we should be then strongly proposing & justifying for their design & implementation.

If we seek an ideal platform for where we as IEs can innovate, it would be supply chains. There has never been so much opportunity to improve the supply chains as in this period more than twenty (20) years into the 21^st century.

We have faced many challenges with supply chains since their inception in the 1990s. Costs continue to rise. Items, including critical ones such commodities, medicines, & spare parts, are chronically out of stock. If items are not out of stock, their deliveries are frequently delayed or incomplete. And if it’s not delays or outs-of-stock, we would have too much inventories of the items, in which we incur unwanted storage & logistics expenses. Items also go obsolete due to expiry and changes in customer preferences, which lead to waste & expensive disposals.

Supply chains also have faced increasing risk and frequent disruptions. Supply chain managers (SCMs) have been unable to tackle adversities with the existing infrastructure and resources they are limited to.

Supply chains, thus, need to change. Business leaders, however, have been slow to realise that. Supply chain management by itself is becoming a futile option to sustaining the viabilities of supply chains.

A supply chain is a conglomeration of relationships within & between enterprises which transact, convert, & move merchandise from one operation to the next, starting from the sources (e.g. raw materials) to their ends (i.e., the final end-users). They’re not really chains that are linearly connected by ‘links;’ they branch out like trees. They’re not eco-systems as glorified by some so-called experts; supply chains aren’t jungles. Contracts between individuals & enterprises doing business with each other determine how supply chains operate.

Industrial engineers are most qualified to improve supply chains. IEs would have the competent abilities to tackle the complex systems & structures underlying supply chains, given that they are based on relationships. IEs would have the experience in optimising the methods & frameworks used in supply chain operations. IEs also have the talents to focus on the holistic designs of systems as much as on the processes of specific activities.

IEs would engineer our supply chains, not manage them. Supply chains present a splendid opportunity for IEs to show off their prowess in problem solving and productivity improvements.

We don’t need to be endorsed by professional associations or private groups to be recognised as IEs. We just need to do what the early engineers did more than a century ago, i.e., we should solve problems and build systems via our own initiatives. We should proactively innovate, invent, & implement solutions.

Nowhere is it more promising to present our IE capabilities than in existing supply chains. There is much potential, if not so many problems, waiting to be worked on in supply chains.

We don’t need to join a club to justify ourselves. We just need to show what we can do.

About Ellery’s Essays

The Reality Check

It happens all the time.

We go to an off-site strategic planning session (or a seminar or workshop), bond with colleagues in teambuilding exercises, creatively come up with new ideas, and commit to action plans to implement them.

As soon as we return to our workplaces, we go back to doing what we have always been doing. We respond to requests that have piled up on our inboxes and we catch up on tasks because we have deadlines to meet. Some of us may try to implement some of those action plans we committed to, but sooner or later, they fall by the wayside because we have other more important things our bosses tell us to do. It’s as if we never left; that off-site experience seemed just a dream.

The first step to building supply chains is envisioning. We, who are enterprise professionals, stakeholders, and our partners formulate a future supply chain state we all agree we want to attain.

Envisioning requires collaboration which involves both the sharing of information & ideas, and negotiation. We put forth varying positions on what each of us believes what our supply chains should be like and what they should deliver. The hard part would be marrying our and their positions into one agreed vision for a future supply chain state. We spend time & energy listening, conversing, & convincing as we iron out differences and understand each other’s opinions. We give and take until we arrive to a consensus.

When we and our partners finally settle on a common vision for our supply chains, we celebrate. A common vision among supply chain partners would be a significant achievement, a feat which many enterprises have not pulled off. It may even be a first time for whatever industry we are in, thereby a triumph which could lead to breakthrough results.

Excited as we may be about what we envisioned, we wonder if we could really achieve that vision we and our partners just hammered out. Is our vision going to be just like those ideas we committed to in the last off-site strategic planning session we went to? Is it just another dream that disintegrates as soon as we wake up to our supply chain realities?

We can all be fired up to implement new concepts in our operations only to see them immediately fail as soon as we run into adversities. For example, we may want to start using statistical control charts to monitor materials as they transform to finished goods. We assign & orient operators to update the charts at their respective workplaces. After a few days, the charts are no more. The operators didn’t appreciate the value of the control charts as they complained they had no time to measure samples and graph them. Vendors and customers didn’t see the relevance of the control charts to their own quality parameters. And finally, our bosses didn’t care for them even though they signed off on using the charts in that last off-site strategic planning session.

Envisioning a future state can be exciting. But the excitement easily extinguishes as soon as we come back to reality. Hence, to proceed with the building of our supply chains, we need to undertake the next step after envisioning: the reality check.

To build a supply chain, we must not only have a clear vision of the future systems & structures we are aiming for, we also must see visibly what we currently have and are doing. We can’t proceed to our destination without knowing where we’re starting from.

In the reality check, or what some of us may formally call the diagnostic assessment, we lay out and examine the details of our present-day operations. We map activities, draw the structures of our organisations & relationships, tabulate operating prerequisites, gather & graph performance information, and lay out facility & flow diagrams.

The purpose of the reality check is twofold:

It’s to understand what we’re doing and find out where we are today.
It’s to identify the gaps between our present state and future state.

A reality check is an exercise in evaluation. We make visible the systems & structures and gauge the performance of our supply chain operations. It’s essentially showing a mirror of one’s operations to stakeholders.

Reality checks are not meant to be springboards to quick-fix solutions, even though we may immediately find offhand obvious ones as we examine our supply chains.

We use reality checks to compare our present supply chain states to the future state vision we and our partners formulated. We not only gain insight about what and how our supply chains are doing but also explore how far we need to go & how much we need to do. In short, we identify the gaps.

It’s nice to dream, to conjure a future state which would be better than what we presently are in.

But our dream clouds go “poof!” as soon as they collide with realities.

Supply chain realities give us no respite. As soon as we form a collaborated vision with our colleagues & partners, we should do a reality check or formally, a diagnosis of our present-day supply chain operations.

When we make visible our supply chains operations and their performances, we can assess where we are today and comprehend the gaps between our supply chains today and our visions for them.

About Ellery’s Essays

A Supply Chain Vision with Specifics Would be a Remarkable Feat

Building the supply chain which we & our partners want begins with envisioning. We define a future state for the operational links between our enterprises and our suppliers, service providers, & customers in which we aim to achieve mutually beneficial strategic goals.

A vision for our supply chains is not only a narrative about what we want to become but also an outline of objectives. Envisioning is not like looking through a telescope at a far-off place, and then telling ourselves, “this is where we want to go.” It’s not just about what we want our operations to look like but also about how we want our supply chains to perform.

The following is an example of a five (5) year vision for a supply chain for steel products (e.g., I-beams ):

Note that the above vision describes a “mass-customisation value-oriented supply chain.” A supply chain vision communicates the doctrine we aim for our operations. It also expresses support for our enterprises’ overall missions, in which in this case is “to be the preferred suppliers of metal products in the construction industry.”

The vision statement narrates how we want our supply chain to operate. At the same time, via the vision’s objectives, it elaborates the results we want to expect. In the above example, this includes “20% growth in shipments, 100% item availability, perfect order deliveries, lowest cost versus rivals, zero scrapping, and zero defects quality.”

The purpose of envisioning is to imagine what we want our supply chains to become. Just like when we construct houses or facilities, a vision of our supply chain serves as a blueprint for how we & our partners will build our operations.

But again, just as in building houses or facilities, a supply chain vision is like an architectural plan, in which it is a broad picture of the future state of operations. We typically seek assistance from engineers to help us develop specific plans based on our visionary blueprint.

When we build houses or facilities, specific plans include electrical schematics, structural diagrams, and plumbing layouts. In supply chains, these would consist of detailed maps of operations.

We usually underestimate the time & effort we need to envision & plan the building of our supply chains. It’s a given in construction projects that we sometimes change our plans even when the facility is already halfway finished. We change plans not only because we noticed something we didn’t foresee but also because we were not thorough enough in finalising what we wanted in the first place.

We are only human therefore changes are often forthcoming. But it pays to keep changes to a minimum; changes are after all expensive and causes delays. We tend to rush sometimes through the envisioning and planning stage and thus, it becomes more likely we will make last-minute changes.

In envisioning supply chains, we require consensus among partners, which would be very challenging. The devil is in the details as we would likely need to spend much time & effort debating with our partners especially on the specifics of our supply chain vision.

But imagine the sense of accomplishment if we do finally agree to a shared supply chain vision which includes not only a broad plan but specifics as well. It would be a remarkable achievement, a manifestation of collaboration of stakeholders with different points of view to start with. Having a plan where everyone dedicates to would be a historic feat.

Envisioning, however, is only the first step in building the supply chain. We still would need to figure out how to get from where we are (the present state) to our vision (the future state).

We would need to develop a roadmap.

About Ellery’s Essays

Thirteen (13) Do’s & Don’ts in Supply Chain Envisioning

Before we change, improve, or build our supply chains, we must first have a vision. We must first agree with our partners what we want our supply chains to become.

Envisioning is not an activity of a single individual or enterprise when it comes to transforming our supply chains. It requires consensus between stakeholders of our organisations and our partners, who include our suppliers, service providers, and customers.

We as human individuals have different personalities. Some of us are extroverts and some of us are introverts. Some of us are assertive and some of us are shy. When it comes to social interactions, some of us dominate the discussion while others remain silent. Hence, it is always a challenge to collaborate to envision, especially for our large, complicated supply chains.

Nevertheless, for envisioning to succeed, we all must participate. We each must have our say and contribute. If any one of us and our partners don’t agree with the majority on a common vision, we won’t fully realise our desired future state.

A large aviation company decided to streamline its supply chain. Top management decided to outsource a large part of its in-house production operations. The aviation company contracted vendors to fabricate thousands of aircraft parts and arranged with 3^rd party service contractors to put the parts together into modules such as fuselages, cockpits, wings, and passenger seating areas. The aviation company would then join the modules into completely assembled aircrafts at their main facility. The aviation company would benefit from shorter production lead times as vendors & 3^rd party contractors would be given deadlines and quotas to deliver parts & modules.

Things did not go as the aviation company envisioned. Vendors could not meet deadlines & quotas. Contractors were not delivering modules within the aviation company’s time frame. When modules did arrive at the aviation company’s assembly site, inspectors found that some did not meet specifications. Contractors had to rework modules. The aviation company mandated more frequent inspections of parts & components which in turn caused more delays.

The aviation company did not consult its partners about its vision. It simply told vendors and service providers what they wanted from them. Partners (which in this case were treated more as subordinates) were just told to comply otherwise the aviation company will find someone else to do the job. As much as partners tried, they could not immediately comply with the aviation company’s standards and the aviation company could not find better suppliers than the ones they already had.

Over a period of months, the aviation company worked with its suppliers and contractors to communicate concerns and fix the problems. Finally, suppliers and the aviation company would share common goals. The company was able to shorten lead times and deliver to customers. Both the aviation company and its suppliers still had many challenges to hurdle, but at last, they promised to work together.

Envisioning is a group effort, not in which an enterprise does and dictates to others. No matter how large or reputable our enterprise may be, it is always best to work with suppliers and customers, rather than tell them what to do.

True, it can be and is difficult to work with partners. They are after all differently managed and have agenda of their own. We may even unfairly prejudge them as inferior in how they manage their organisations. But our partners are there because they are our key connections in the supply chains which we are part and parcel of. As much as they may be willing to kowtow to our standards, they don’t answer to us. We must not subjugate them but instead, we should treat them as associates which we could cultivate mutually beneficial relationships.

Envisioning is a collaborative process. And because there will be much communication and negotiation as we hammer out accords for a shared vision, we should take care with some do’s and don’ts in how we interact with our supply chain partners:

Do Our Homework

Before we negotiate with partners, we must understand the supply chains we are a part of. We should be familiar not only with the operations of our enterprises but also with the activities that precede and come after ours. It saves time when we invest in understanding what is happening in our supply chains, both inside and outside the walls of our businesses.

2. Do Get Our Acts Together

We should know what we want before we communicate our interests to partners. We also should ensure that we and our in-house colleagues are aligned to our enterprises’ objectives. In short, we and the people of our organisations should be united, if not at least aligned, to our enterprise’s standards and goals.

3. Do Take a Stand

We know what we want in our enterprises, and this should be basis for the positions we present to our partners. Having a stand becomes a springboard for discussion and negotiation.

4. …But Do Be Prepared to Bend

As much as we have standards which are non-negotiable, we, at the same time, should be willing to bend some for the sake of give-and-take negotiating especially if it would lead to win-win agreements which would provide gains we won’t get on our own.

5. Don’t Hold Back But Do Be Polite

We should be blunt but respectful. There’s nothing to lose by being tactful and polite. It may be wise to be hesitant to present privileged data, but we should be prepared to voice our views with supporting information if it would help negotiations progress.

6. Do Give or Take

Negotiations is always about give-or-take. It’s about accepting to do our share of work and sharing information & resources. But it’s also a two-way street. Partners should also agree to do their share and we should insist what we believe we deserve to take from them.

7. Don’t Give Up

Stalemates are expected in any negotiation. We and who we talk to may come to disagreement in which we each would refuse to give what one asks. We, therefore, should give each other time and leeway to think things over. But we should not give up or quit. We should always seek some innovative alternative because our supply chains’ future depends on it.

8. Don’t Delegate

Do not ask someone else to do the negotiating especially if we’re the supply chain leader of an enterprise. Because when we do, it immediately sends a message we, who supposedly are in charge, are not serious in the first place.

9. Don’t Overly Assert

Don’t push partners too hard even if we perceive that they will easily cede to whatever we ask for. Partners, as mentioned earlier, are not like us. They may just say ‘yes’ to our every request to ensure they have our business but we both may not end up what we were aiming for. We are after benefits for them as well as for us and if we push without considering their interests, it would surely backfire.

10. Don’t Come with Closed Minds

Listening is essential in the joint activity of envisioning. It isn’t just about hearing or about empathic understanding; it’s also about having an open mind to ideas the other side may propose.

11. Don’t Pretend

We should come into any envisioning process with authenticity, that is, without masks which disguise our true selves. Honesty is the best policy.

12. Don’t Leave as if Nothing Happened

It’s not a good idea after meeting partners to go back to work as if nothing happened. Just like #8 above, it makes us look phony as much as we have wasted time and effort.

13. Don’t Rebel

The worst thing we can do is go back against what we promised to our partners. It’s one thing to work out an elegantly shared vision; it’s a way bad thing if we treat it nothing more than a scrap of paper & ink which we mean to not comply or oppose subsequently. That is one sure way of ending relationships and going backward in our supply chain efforts.

Envisioning is a collaborative process. But it’s not necessarily a smooth easy one. There will be disagreements as we hear views & see data we may not like. Our partners are unlike us as we each are individuals with our own agenda. But because we are connected via the supply chains we are embedded in, it’s at least worth the try to formulate a common future state for what we want our supply chains to become.

About Ellery’s Essays

Engaging Engineers in Supply Chain Envisioning

Engineers are accustomed to working with tangible things like machines, electrical circuits, infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges), plumbing, and information & automated technologies. They don’t quite get involved with intangibles like supply chains. Nevertheless, there is a need for supply chain engineers.

Supply chain engineers (SCEs) study the input & output of activities occurring within and between links, not to mention they also examine the interactive relationships that make up these links.

Building supply chains has some similarities with building houses.

Before we build a house, we first not only envision what it would look like inside & outside, but we also imagine what it would be like living in it.

Do we foresee, for example, a multi-level residence including a basement and attic? Or do we favour a one-storey bungalow with a spacious backyard? The house we dream of would not just be a physical and aesthetic structure, but it would also be a place that would be in line with the routines we plan to do when we move in.

We typically consult architects about our visions for the houses we want to build. Architects are trained & experienced in designing buildings and bringing them to life in the form of drawings and models.

After we & the architects finalise what we want our house to look like, we then would seek contractors, typically engineers, to help us how we will build it. Engineers draft detailed blueprints, bills of materials, project schedules, & cost estimates based on the approved architectural plans. Construction follows when we sign off on the proposals and the contractors get to work.

We deal with multiple relationships when it comes to supply chains. It wouldn’t be logical to envision what we want our supply chains to be without discussing it with our partners, who not only are the neighbouring departments to our workplaces but who also are our suppliers, service providers, and customers. The purpose of communicating our ideas with our partners is to work together with them towards a common vision. It is not only us but also our partners who have stakes in the overall supply chain in which our enterprise is only a part of.

When we start exchanging ideas with our partners, I would advise that a supply chain engineer (SCE) already be in the loop of the conversation. Like our consulting an architect to designing a new home, SCEs should be present when we and our partners are envisioning the supply chain we want.

SCEs help us picture what and how our and our partners’ operating relationships would be like. SCEs visualise and assess operations via their expertise via tools such as value-stream mapping (VSM) and process flow diagrams. They help establish monitoring systems, and analyse performance from these systems to assess the health of supply chain relationships.

SCEs embed themselves in the relationships between supply chain partners. They strive to understand individual partners’ views of supply chain operations and find out the ideals they pursue. Unlike projects where engineers work with single clients, SCEs work with partners from one supply chain tier to the next, as they find the common ground which would become the foundation for a shared vision.

The supply chain engineers’ role is not to build teams but to build supply chains. SCEs don’t get involved in interpersonal issues. If there are partners who have personal conflicts with one another, it’s best they iron them out first with the help of their superiors or via consultation with organisational development professionals.

SCEs, however, can assist partners in addressing crises in their operations, especially if the crises are negatively affecting operations of other partners upstream or downstream the supply chain. SCEs solve problems as any other engineer does; they help partners fix supply chain crises and put out burning platforms.

The purpose of envisioning with supply chain partners is grounded on mutual benefit. It’s not charity, nor should there be hidden agenda for the self-centred aim to get something out for oneself. It is about individuals cooperating to achieve results in which everyone reaps positive gains.

Supply chains are comprehensive and complex. SCEs help partners make sense of the intricacies of individual operations and how they all tie in together. They can feedback insights to help supply chain partners cultivate ideas about what and how their supply chains should operate.

When we build our houses, we have a vision. The same holds true when we build supply chains, except the vision must be a shared one with partners. It’s not teambuilding, but collaboration towards mutually beneficial outcomes.

Envisioning via engagement with SCEs is a crucial first step in building the supply chains we want.

About Ellery’s Essays

Envisioning: The First Step to Building Supply Chains

Supply chains are big, long, comprehensive, and complicated. Managing them means dealing with multiple customers, vendors & service providers. We buy and deliver from and to distant places or just next-door. We sell many types of products and handle much more in raw & packaging materials and in-process inventories. We move merchandise via elaborate sea, land, and air transport networks.

We encounter so many problems with supply chains, which if we solve, lead to huge benefits, but if left unsolved, cause costly setbacks to our organisations.

We’re realising that supply chain management by itself is no longer sufficient in solving operational problems. As much as we have been lured by digital information technologies, cutting-edge automation, and buzzword concepts like Just-in-Time, Lean, & Six Sigma, we have not been made significant strides in improving the productivities of our supply chains. We have even forgotten about productivity itself as fickle domestic & international trade policies, increasing industrial labour strife, and divisive political & social activism distract us in our management of supply chains.

We maintain short-term relationships with partners (i.e., vendors, service providers, and customers), instead of working with them toward long-term ones. We rationalise that it’s hard to peg lasting relationships with partners because our enterprise strategies & portfolios are constantly evolving. Products change, our needs change, and our operations change, so how can we develop lasting relationships with our partners? We can’t figure out how our supply chains should be set up because we don’t know what the situation will be like tomorrow.

We’re not getting the results we want and many of us don’t have a clear idea of what we want in the first place. We’re more reactive than proactive when it comes to managing supply chains. There are too many day-to-day things to address or worse, there are burning platforms, that are overwhelming and keeping us from taking the initiative to improve our operations.

So, what should we do? How do we get the upper hand over our supply chains such that we can manage them to be better?

Answer: we rebuild them. We rebuild supply chains to what we want them to be. Better, more productive, and beneficial to all, that is, we and our partners.

Building better supply chains is not the same as constructing new facilities or inventing new machines. Supply chains are intangible. Even though they have tangible components like transportation vehicles, production lines, storage facilities, & material handling equipment, these components taken together, as in a series of connected operations, are not readily perceptible.

We as individuals view supply chains differently. What one enterprise executive sees would not be the same as what another perceives. It is a challenge therefore for stakeholders (i.e., enterprises, suppliers, customers) to have shared points of view of their supply chains.

Building supply chains, therefore, requires collaboration among partners. Collaboration begins with alignment towards a vision, in which we agree to a single set of supply chain objectives. The very first step to building supply chains is, therefore, envisioning.

Envisioning is not the same as the visioning activity many organisations do via their teambuilding sessions. Teambuilding sessions are often activities where organisations aim to foster employee camaraderie and morale. From experience, many so-called visions from these teambuilding sessions fall flat; they never make it as seriously pursued work goals that go beyond the fancy posters on bulletin boards. Employees in many firms go back to what they were doing as soon as they walk into their workplaces and face the hard realities of their jobs.

Envisioning would also not apply for entrepreneurs who are just starting up or who are struggling to survive. It doesn’t make sense to envision when survival is the immediate goal. Most successful entrepreneurs have clear & set dreams when they begin their businesses; envisioning just after we commence business wouldn’t therefore be logical.

Envisioning is an activity in which we and our supply chain partners work together to visualise a mutually beneficial future state. We and our partners develop and deliberate on what we imagine would be our ideal supply chains, ones in which everyone would stand to benefit from in productivity and in achievement of shared goals.

It is not about one (1) individual’s or enterprise’s vision but one that is shared among partners, in which we all are active stakeholders in the enterprises that make up our supply chains. Every partner should therefore contribute to the task of envisioning.

We face many challenges with our supply chains. So much so, that we should consider rebuilding them to be better. The first thing we need to do when building our supply chains is to work with our partners to envision a common future state for our supply chains.

If we can establish something in common to shoot for, it would be a big first step as we and our partners seize the initiative in rebuilding our supply chains.

About Ellery’s Essays

How We Look at Life in Four Ways

There are four (4) kinds of people:

Pessimists
Optimists
Realists
Hypocrites

Pessimists see only the bad in life. Optimists look for the good in things. Realists balance both good and bad. Hypocrites don’t have a view about good or bad; they see life as a means to gain benefits for themselves.

Pessimism, optimism, realism, and hypocrisy are how we look at and approach life.

Pessimists stress adversity in whatever scenario. They don’t like surprises of the negative kind; they believe there’s a possible catastrophe lurking around the corner. Pessimists, thus, tend to be over-cautious and avoid adventures. Pessimists hate risk; they’d rather stay far from it if they can’t mitigate it.

Optimists, on the other hand, endeavour for the positive in their daily activities. What pessimists see as dark clouds; optimists see silver linings around those clouds. Optimists believe there’s good even in the worst of anything, and thus are motivated to drive for changes they trust will result in a better world. Optimists embrace risk & dive into adventure, as they trust something great will come out of either.

Realists balance both the good and the bad in their daily lives. If a pessimist, optimist, and realist were facing a tunnel, the pessimist would see a dark tunnel; the optimist would see a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it; and the realist would see a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it and another dark tunnel after it. Realists look for what they think reflects the starkness of reality: that there will always be positive & negative outcomes. Realists plan for the bad and the good. They calculate risks and assess for beneficial rates of return before making their moves.

Hypocrites don’t care about the positives or negatives in life; they only pretend they do. Hypocrites will side with either the pessimist, optimist, or realist if they sense some benefit from doing so. Hypocrites don’t see good or bad, nor do they bother to calculate risks or assess rates of returns. They ask questions like ‘what’s in it for me?’, and ‘how can I benefit from someone else’s work?’.

Pessimists won’t jump into a pond; they’ll say it’s too dark or dirty, and likely will catch a cold. Optimists would jump right in, saying the water will be fine and it will be fun. Realists would circle the pond to check its condition and carefully wade in. Hypocrites would wait until everyone had made their decision about the pond, and then jump in and claim credit for the fun, or they will condemn people and say ‘I-told-you-so,’ if something bad happens.

We may brand ourselves as optimists, pessimists, or realists, but we’d be reluctant to identify ourselves as hypocrites. We don’t like to be called hypocrites because we equate them with parasites, traitors, or do-nothing individuals. Being named a hypocrite is an insult, even if many of us are.

The trouble is just as much we are pessimists, optimists, & realists, we are hypocrites too.

Examples:

We ride gas-guzzling jet planes to travel to other cities to join climate change rallyists protesting against fossil fuels.

We bring our pets to be blessed by priests, but we support the same priests when they ban or rid our churches of stray animals.

We commit to teamwork at an employees’ corporate seminar, but we will run to be the first in line at the dining room buffet table.

We complain about motorists stopping suddenly on highways, but we grumble when traffic police won’t let us park in front of the school where we wait to pick up our children as they come out.

We whine about how slow the ticket booth attendant is as we wait to claim free tickets to the local movie theatre.

The big difference between optimists, pessimists, & realists and hypocrites is authenticity. We are honest about ourselves when we are either of the first three, but we would be offended if people call us hypocrites.

Hypocrisy is about not being authentic about our opinions and approaches to life. Hypocrites fake themselves to be pessimists, optimists, or realists so that they will get a cut of the benefits the other three supposedly will get.

Hypocrisy is why we join clubs and make friends with people whom we really don’t care about. Hypocrisy is when we insist our sons join the family business or demand our daughters stop dating boys who we don’t share religious or political beliefs with (or worse, who are of different ethnicity). We notice much hypocrisy when corporate executives and government politicians release rosy press statements about themselves.

But as much as we stigmatise hypocrisy as an evil, we apply hypocrisy purposefully as an alternative to pessimism, optimism, and realism. This is because sometimes we don’t want to show our true colours as an optimist, pessimist, or realise, especially if doing so would lead to confrontations with others who don’t share the same outlook. We, instead, opt to be hypocrites and pretend to be a member of the majority, such that we avoid conflict and have a better chance of getting some benefit out of it.

We are either pessimists, optimists, or realists, based on our outlooks about life. We either see only darkness, light, or the balance of the two, and we would be authentic about it. Hypocrites have no outlook; they don’t see positive, negative, or balance, and pretend to be either of the other three.

Hypocrisy has a bad connotation, but we often are hypocrites, even if we won’t admit it. We become hypocrites to be socially acceptable and benefit from relationships, never mind if we don’t really care about them or we’re just pretending to.

Some people preach against hypocrisy. But it isn’t a sin, as much as it is a way we see and deal with life’s challenges.

In more ways than one, we are all hypocrites.

About Ellery’s Essays

Strategic Planning as Problem Solving: Why Not?

We sometimes create problems more than we encounter them.

A large conglomerate builds a huge packaging facility in the outskirts of Manila. When I visited the plant, I asked the operations manager why such a big facility was built?

“We built the facility to attract customers,” the operations managers said.

“So, it was built, so customers will come?” I asked.

“Yes,” the manager said.

“And have they come?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said the manager.

The operations manager was in charge of entertaining potential clients and making sure the facility was efficient in production and cost.

The large conglomerate advertises the available capacity of the plant through its network of contacts. Over a few years, it got some clients but still had excess capacity.

A large developer constructed a complex of high-rise residential and commercial buildings. The developer depended on brokers and marketing employees to sell the buildings’ office and residential spaces even as construction was hardly underway. The developer provided incentives for every unit sale but despite the efforts, sales was sluggish. Worse, the building complex was beside a man-made river that overflowed during a heavy rain storm. The complex was flooded for a short while but it was enough to turn off would-be customers. To this day, the complex remains low on occupancy. The developer’s marketing team continues to work hard to sell the complex.

Meanwhile, a nearby building complex enjoyed brisk demand even before it was built, and occupancy remains high. The competing complex is located near a major highway and successfully wooed several multinationals to set up their headquarters in several buildings.

A bank opened a new branch in the neighbourhood. The bank assigned the branch manager a minimum monthly quota of new clients and a monthly target of new deposits for the branch. To find the clients, the branch manager went door-to-door around the neighbourhood to sell her branch’s services. Up to the present day, she sometimes meets her monthly targets, but sometimes she doesn’t. “It can be quite hard,” she says.

In the above-mentioned examples, the success of the packaging facility, the high-rise building complex, and the bank branch was measured on how well they got customers. The packaging facility did get some clients but still had capacity for more. The high-rise building complex constructed near an overflowing river ended up a failure. The bank branch and its manager struggle month after month to meet quota.

It is common in business for executives to invest in large projects and then hope that the returns of such investments will be realized right away. In many cases, the executives delegate the responsibility of realizing the returns to their subordinates. The executives package the responsibility as a challenge. For the subordinates, it’s more of a problem given the pressure to perform to meet expectations.

In these three examples, the subordinates work to solve problems stemming from the strategies of executives. The strategy is the real problem and subordinates are stuck with the symptoms.

In many organizations, executives expect their subordinates to just fix the problems even if the executives know their strategies are the causes. To the executives, the strategy is a given and the subordinates just have to solve the problems a strategy may have created.

Strategy shouldn’t be a given and executives should take responsibility for their strategic decisions. The common pitfall in strategic planning is jumping into a plan not only without enough study but also without considering whether it will solve problems or create many more.

Strategic planning can be viewed as a form of problem solving. To put it anther way, the approach to strategic planning can apply similar to problem solving. That is:

Recognize a fuzzy situation
Define the problem;
Brainstorm ideas or solutions;
Set criteria for the chosen solution;
Decide on the solution.

Change the word “solution” to “strategy” and one would have an approach to strategic planning.

About Ellery’s Essays

Why We Need to Collaborate & Not Accommodate in Improving Supply Chains

We formalise our supply chain relationships via agreements we forge with our partners, who are our vendors, 3^rd party service providers, & customers. We manage our supply chain operations to ensure we perform to the agreed expectations of our partners.

Most supply chains have existing infrastructure in place when we negotiate with our partners. Our manufacturing & logistics facilities are set up and running. Our fleets of delivery vehicles are available and ready. Our telecommunication & information systems are in place and operating.

We adapt our supply chains to terms & conditions of the contracts we have with our vendors & service providers, or to the commitments we made with our customers. We plan, organise, direct, and control our systems & resources and enlist & work with people to establish standards & achieve objectives to ensure we meet our ends of the deals.

It is a norm in many of our organisations to accommodate to what we agreed to with our partners. We accommodate buying large volumes of inbound materials and receiving them into whatever limited storage space we have available because we want to qualify for vendors’ discounts. We accommodate to individual customers’ preferences in delivery schedules & quantities, never mind if we make repeated deliveries in less-than-truckload (LTL) quantities which result in higher freight costs.

A large beverage supplier offered a multinational retailer an additional 10% discount if the latter buys more than three (3) times its regular monthly ordering quantity before the end of the calendar year. The retailer agrees to the deal and immediately leases out all the storage space it could find to accommodate the additional volume the beverage supplier delivers. The retailer’s logistics expenses soar but the savings from the beverage supplier’s discounts more than make up for the costs.

But as much as the benefits seem to beat the costs, other trade-offs from the deal become manifest. The multinational retailer distributes the excess merchandise bought from the beverage supplier to all its stores nationwide. Three (3) months later, the stores return many of the beverage products, either due to damages or because some had overshot their shelf lives. The retailer tells the beverage supplier it is returning the damaged or expired merchandise. The beverage supplier refuses to accept the said merchandise all at once such that the retailer is forced to extend its warehouse leases to store the cannot-be-sold merchandise. The retailer tells the beverage supplier it won’t be buying its regular supply of beverage products until the former is able to return all the unsaleable merchandise. For three (3) months, the beverage supplier’s products are nowhere to be seen at any of the retailer’s stores.

This cycle between the retailer and its suppliers has occurred every year. Retailer buys plenty; ‘saves’ from sizable price discounts; incurs larger storage & transportation expenses; its stores return excess merchandise; retailer & suppliers get into conflict regarding returns. For whatever the retailer and the retailer gained from savings and additional sales respectively, both parties lose in not meeting the demands of consumers. Over the long run, competition from rival retailers and other beverage suppliers seize more market share from both enterprises.

When we agree to new deals with our partners, we often put the cart before the horse in managing our supply chains. We adjust our plans and operations to accommodate to whatever we agreed to. Partners, on the other hand, also accommodate their operations to meet what we expect from them. They also adjust their production and logistics activities to suit whatever we insist.

Accommodation is not bad, but it exacts a price especially if it requires us to change our operations significantly and frequently. How much is it worth when we change production schedules abruptly, arm-twist our vendors to deliver materials earlier, or deliver LTL quantities often? It may look like that the benefits outweigh the costs but are we sure we got all the costs covered?

We should not accommodate when we make deals with our partners. We should instead, collaborate, that is, we and our partners should work to adapt our systems & structures jointly, cooperatively, and rationally.

Collaboration can only be a huge success in the supply chain field when we and our partners not only cooperate but also when we deliberately tailor our systems & structures together.

Tailoring our and our partners’ systems & structures requires not only management but engineering expertise. Supply chains are complicated, and we and our partners can’t just outright keep accommodating to whatever deals we both agree to. We need to engineer our supply chains to customise them to the fast-changing business environments we work in.

About Ellery’s Essays

Bridging the Supply Chain Management-Engineering Gap

Engineers turn scientific ideas into reality. They do it by identifying problems, studying the data, and finally solving them.

Engineers apply concepts from the pure sciences, such as Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, & Biology. We see these concepts come to life in the fields of civil, electrical, mechanical, & chemical engineering, and in their sub-specialties such as nuclear, aerospace, biomedical, metallurgical, telecommunications, & software engineering.

Engineers are inventors and builders of tangible systems & structures, like buildings, factories, machines, roads, bridges, chemical processes, pipelines, dams, & data networks. They create stuff we could sense, i.e., see, touch, hear, and even smell & taste. If we don’t sense it, we’d have a difficult time appreciating it as an engineering marvel. Seeing is believing when it comes to engineering.

Supply chains are models of operative relationships which enable the flow & transformation of merchandise and services from their sources to their final consumption. They, however, aren’t tangible. As much as there are physical components to them such as warehouses, factories, equipment, and transportation, we can’t visualise supply chains in their entireties except via maps or flow charts.

Supply chains are not easy to understand, and we have different points of view regarding them. We manage them differently from firm to firm, industry to industry.

Because supply chains aren’t tangible and because they’re founded on relationships, we don’t engineer them. Instead, we manage them. By management, we, together with people via partnerships, plan, organise, direct, and control resources to achieve targets consistent with our enterprises’ missions and goals. Management has been our go-to approach to optimising supply chains.

We, however, seems to be getting to the point that management may no longer be enough when it comes to improving supply chains.

As supply chains have become more global and complex, managing them has become more difficult. Adversities are becoming harder to address as broader supply chains become more exposed to risks and uncertainties. These adversities range from day-to-day issues (e.g., delayed deliveries of raw materials, infighting between functions) to crises (e.g., pandemic, wars, labour strikes).

We are also dealing with more items, more activities, and more territories to cover. Some of us oversee the operations for thousands of products. Some of us negotiate with numerous vendors and service providers from all over the world. It doesn’t help that enterprises continue to expand product lines, or to merge or acquire other businesses.

We did, however, accomplish a lot thanks to supply chain management.

We transformed our enterprises to adapt to the realities of global supply chains. We collaborated with suppliers and set up supply, information, & logistics networks which enhanced visibility. We reduced lead times in production and transportation. Our enterprise superiors have appointed chief supply chain officers who changed organisational structures to break down functional barriers.

We adopted cutting-edge technologies from blockchains to artificial intelligence. We began to use drones & self-driving vehicles to deliver products to customers within the day they order and we automated our warehouses and production via robots and automatically guided vehicles.

But despite our investments and our initiatives, our supply chains remain far from their productive potentials. Even as our enterprises have grown in wealth and influence, our supply chains aren’t much different than they were at the end of the 20^th century. Inventories swing from high to low or worse to out-of-stock. We fall behind in serving when our customers clamour for our products. And we frequently have to fight fires from ‘burning platforms.’

To put it simply: we’re stuck.

Engineering is where we go when we want to improve what we’re managing. Engineers help increase our capabilities especially in tackling overwhelming adversities. They help getting us out of where we’re ‘stuck’ in.

We, therefore, need engineering to help us become better in optimising, if not at least managing, our supply chains.

But before anything else, we must realise and accept that engineering is no longer limited to the application of the pure sciences but the tapping of lessons from the social sciences as well.

We must consider the relationships that are the foundations of our supply chains. If we are to engineer improvements into our supply chains, we’d have to improve those relationships.

This is kind of uncharted territory. Industrial Engineering (IE) is the closest to of any engineering discipline to handle supply chains. IE evolved from the accomplishments of Frederick Taylor in his introduction of workplace standards and his subsequent publication of his Principles of Scientific Management. Taylor bridged the gap between engineering and management with his efforts to apply science in the improvement of worker productivity.

We don’t hear much about Frederick Taylor or his Principles of Scientific Management in our present day, but the lessons we learned from him echo in how we improve the productivities of our workplaces. We do time studies to determine value-adding and non-value-adding activities, for example. We track the turnaround times of transportation vehicles. We minimise idle times of our production lines and utilise the most we can get from our machine capacities.

Many of us don’t appreciate Industrial Engineering as an engineering discipline because it addresses problems that are more intangible than what other engineers solve. IE works on stuff like methods, procedures, movements, operator-machine interfaces, & organisational hierarchies, which are the kinds of things that are not easy to see or grasp outright.

Industrial Engineering is more of an application of social science than pure science. We don’t do as much physics, chemistry, & biology in uplifting workers as much as we apply economics, sociology, and even politics. We associate IE more with improving the efficiencies of people via simple techniques like time & motion studies. We don’t appreciate that IE does substantial engineering such as in ergonomics, facilities planning, and operations research.

Industrial Engineering, nevertheless, has proven to be valuable in improving overall productivity. Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management have made us not only more conscious of efficiency in what we do but also more proactive in finding the most optimum means to achieve our goals.

We as Industrial Engineers have our work cut out to detach IE as a subset of management to a discipline of engineering. We need to cross the bridge from seeing ourselves as management engineers (an oxymoron) to engineers who are builders of not only the tangible but also the intangible.

The opportunity to prove ourselves as builders of both the tangible and the intangible lies with supply chains.

As Frederick Taylor and Industrial Engineering has done with the human workplace, we can do the same with supply chains. We can apply scientific thinking to improving the productivity of supply chain operations.

We can bridge the gap between supply chain management and supply chain engineering.

About Ellery’s Essays