Is your supply chain planning helping you?

And are you actually using it?

I get it

Tariffs change fast and it’s difficult to keep up if you’re in supply chain

News from Gartner surveys show we have a way to go to achieve actionable planning needed in uncertain times:

Only 31% of supply chain planning leaders believe that their organizations are able to deliver a realistic financial plan without sacrificing cost, service or financial commitments.

Definitely not something to make the Board of Directors or your C-Suite happy,

Leaving you to wonder, how can you plan fast enough and without making the above commitment sacrifices?

Below is a list of things to keep in mind as you ponder your answers:

·       Business needs to change its mindset on supply chains, performance, and costs – yesterday’s reality does not apply and even if it did, you can’t change to it fast enough or make it cost effective

·       Strategic planning needs to be useful as a set of guardrails, not just targets. This enables innovation and creativity – not just the same old options in different colors.

·       Plannings a great place for well tested AI. Well tested so that it works in your systems with the constraints you have, future performance you want, and alternatives you want to insert. 

o   You can use AI to go out and capture the significant economic and supply chain variables, determine weights of those variables, and grab insights on assumptions about how the weights (and even variables) will change over your planning horizon

o   Use that data to feed simulations that are held to your in-house data (no sharing with competitors or the markets here) to rapidly run possible scenarios

o   Answer what are the commonalities between solution sets? Where does each option break down? What could be adjusted or segmented in the simulation representing your supply chain(s) being simulated to improve output and increase options?

o   Use a supply chain framework so that all supply chain data and metrics are comparable. You don’t want to optimize on suboptimal data. Nor commit to huge changes, such as segmenting anew supply chains, if your aggregation of metrics includes data from metrics that are measured differently in different business areas. Makes real comparison difficult at best.

·       Put costs to the solution sets, if not already done inside the simulations. For this, you need true Total Supply Chain Costs per supply chain, not just a percentage of business unit costs used as a proxy.

Once you get an acceptable simulation routine going, whatever it looks like. Put it into a set process. You should be able to run rapid automations quickly, even overnight, so solution options are ready for you to analyze early the next morning.

What could possibly go wrong?

·       You already know about meshing incompatible data that doesn’t provide real answers.

·       Focusing on tactical changes causes a lot of jitter in your daily simulation solutions – forcing you to consider implementing a change, taking it out, putting it back in, never really getting the performance right. The viewpoint is too small and costs time, money, and performance.

·       No one listens to the viable strategic results you show are obtainable. They opt instead to go by gut feel, what was done before, or what everyone else seems to be doing.

Eliminate the jitter and focus strategically to determine what is best for the company. A holistic, strategic view is big enough to see strategic solutions that then link into measurable tactical change.

Develop a working Communication Plan that includes input and output to the correct stakeholders. That these stakeholders should be in the know and part of your team is an absolute must.

Without well planned change supported by data, you end up running around your processes. Meaning you’re not compliant and you can’t repeat what was done since everyone is changing something.

Planning is a wonderful thing, until it’s not.

In today’s extreme volatility, supply chain planning leaders need more than improved planning processes alone. They need a framework.

 #framework  #supplychainplanning  #tariffs

 You’ll find topics including critical supply chain planning for today’s volatility and a solid framework for calming uncertainty in our September SCOR supply chain course taught by master instructor and supply chain professional Cynthia Kalina-Kaminsky.    Learn more here

 AND you can sign up now for our August Lunch and Learn where you’ll gain quick tips and insights on the SCOR Framework and how it helps you optimize and organize. Here’s the link: