Vision of Supply Chain Management

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” –JFK

 

One very important part of leader’s job is to provide a vision for the future. As a supply chain leader, I hope I can predict the future of supply chain.

When I graduated from college and plunged into the real world, there was no supply chain, but purchasing and logistic function. I remember as a purchasing and logistic guy, I spent lots of time traveling and visiting suppliers and customers. When I stayed in office, I spent most of my time answering phone calls, or preparing faxes, shipping paperwork, invoices and custom clearance documents on a typewriter. MS Word and Excel just emerged at that time, but they are only available on a handful of PC’s in the precious “PC room”. And PC room is the only place where temperature is controlled, so it became the most popular spot for people to take a nap during lunch time…

In late 1990’s, email and internet started becoming popular. I still remember the old days of the dial-up and twisting thumbs in front of computers and waiting for the texts or pictures displayed via Netscape Mosaic.

Just close your eyes and see if you can still hear the sound of dial tones. “… … …” If you can, it means you are old enough and you know what I am talking about.

 

Look at what are we doing now, what a change!

Since when we spend most of our days in writing emails, creating charts and summarizing data in complicated excel sheets? And from then on, supply chain started to unlock the value that has never been looked at. The purchasing and logistic people shifted their roles of procurement from a back-end processor to a front-end strategic partner with vendors and customers.

In our new roles, supply chain is focused on identifying savings opportunities in terms of aggregating spend, negotiating purchases of materials and services, ensuring delivery and quality and streamlining supply chain processes.

Now can you imagine what supply chain will be in 5, 10 or 15 years?

What will we do by then?

How do we spend our days at work in 2020?

Here is what I think:

First, Visibility and Transparency

There will be a lot more visibility and transparencies. Vendors can see inventory status of retailers; sub-suppliers can see the production schedule of manufacturers; shippers can locate their cargos; and sales, forecasts, inventory, price, costs, just about everything are all transparent…

Just like today, from time to time you can find a buyer walking into a car dealership with information such as MSRP, invoice prices, recent sale price, other dealers’ prices, inventory left on the lot…

So how would you deal with it if you were the car salesman, yank the guy out?

Second, Measurements

Because the visibility and transparency, now you have data for just about everything. For instance, you can tell the timing and location of every touch of your products. You can even tell when your vendor log in your website, what he (or she) typed and what data he (or she) accessed and retrieved.

We all know if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.

So by then anything that can be measured will be measured. As a supply chain leader, a part of your job is to determine what measurement you want to focus on and make improvements.

Third, Executions

In 5, 10 or 15 years, we might not spend as much time as today writing emails. Instead, we might tweet, text message, or…who knows? But one thing for sure, I am convinced that instead of point-to-point contacts (such as personal emails), there will be more group-to-group communications.

As WEB 2.0 and wireless communications mature, more information and hence more work will be pushed on to the web. So as a supply chain professional, you might spend most of your time as a “Digital Community Organizer”. So the hallways, cubicles, and closed-door offices will fade away. There will be a much more open and direct environment where people coordinate and collaborate using internet and wireless technology.

Years ago, Bill Gates predicted there would be no needs for everyone to have a PC, but it did not discount him as the most visionary and influential leader of IT development in our generation.

What I can promise you is I will look back at this posting five years from now, in hope that I am still on the right track, or we may just have a good laugh together.