Many executives insist their organisations need to be resilient. Given all the adversities and disruptions businesses had experienced, it’s understandable to believe resilience is vital. Resilience is “an organization’s ability to adapt to and recover from disruptions, such as natural disasters or market shifts, while maintaining core operations and continuing to function.” But how doesContinue reading “What’s the Metric for Resilience?”
Tag Archives: goals
Five (5) Lessons from an Elevator Story
A high-rise building (let’s call it Building A) has been fixing its nine (9) elevators for the last twelve (12) years. Several times an elevator would fail, and passengers would get stuck, causing trauma and panic. Fortunately, the building’s security quickly rescued trapped passengers and suspended access to the dysfunctional elevators. But for the building’sContinue reading “Five (5) Lessons from an Elevator Story”
Embracing Supply Chain Productivity in Strategic Planning
“No, we will not change our sales policy,” the general manager of the consumer goods wholesale trading company tersely said. As I was formerly a logistics manager and land transportation service provider (trucker for short), the wholesaler GM was asking me for advice on how to bring down transportation costs, which had been rising sharply. Continue reading “Embracing Supply Chain Productivity in Strategic Planning”
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,Continue reading “Envisioning: The First Step to Building Supply Chains”
What Does ‘Back-to-Basics’ Even Mean?
Back-to-basics is a line I had heard in just about every enterprise I worked with. Executives would say to subordinates, “we should go back to basics,” with me and the subordinates wondering if the executives knew what that even meant. Do the executives know what they were talking about? When we say back-to-basics, we probablyContinue reading “What Does ‘Back-to-Basics’ Even Mean?”
What is Your Supply Chain Doctrine?
In our modern world of the 21st century, supply chains are the lifeblood of enterprises. We rely on the procurement, manufacture, and logistics for the supply of essential products & execution of services. Supply chains, given their breadths & complexities, are not easy to manage. We who work in them know that supply chains spanContinue reading “What is Your Supply Chain Doctrine?”
Challenges & Crises: The Two Types of Problems We Tackle in Business
We encounter all kinds of problems every day. And they go by different names, such as: These problems, especially while managing our enterprises, end up as either of two types: We categorise the issues clamouring for our attention as crises or challenges depending on how urgent and important either one is. A crisis demandsContinue reading “Challenges & Crises: The Two Types of Problems We Tackle in Business”
What Our Superiors Expect
Customers expect perfection in service. But what do our superiors expect? For those among us who are supply chain professionals or managers, we answer to our employers, our superiors or bosses, the owners and executives who rule the enterprises we work for. And as much as customers expect us to be perfect in serving them,Continue reading “What Our Superiors Expect”
Visioning: The Last Thing an Enterprise Needs When Starting Up
A husband-and-wife couple approaches and asks a consultant for help in their business. The husband-and-wife couple just started a business selling electrical devices such as relays and circuit breakers. Demand was strong at the onset and the couple found themselves working around the clock serving customer orders. Maybe the consultant can contribute some ideas? TheContinue reading “Visioning: The Last Thing an Enterprise Needs When Starting Up”
Two Tactics That are Better than “No”
Most managers (and white-collar workers) face barrages of requests, if not directives, just about every day. Executives and peers ask managers to do many things such as write reports, attend meetings, do feasibility studies, pay suppliers, or test new products. Many managers would find themselves busy responding to these requests. So much so that they’dContinue reading “Two Tactics That are Better than “No””
Ellery's Essays 