A Haircut Decision – Supply Chain Value

It is time for a haircut again.

How much do you spend on your haircut?

Last time I had my haircut at Supercut. That was a fast one, I just remember the barber did not even move, instead she swirled the chair, less than 5 mins at the cost of $8 bucks, done!

The second day, I went to work.

My colleagues looked at me.

”You had a haircut!”

”Oh, yeah?!”

“Look nice”, then we quickly changed the subject.

In my opinion, a cheap or an expensive haircut won’t look much different after one or two weeks. People say nice words to you for just being polite regardless if it “really” looks good or not, so why bother spending more than $8 on a haircut?

But my friend has a totally different opinion. He says to me that when you bought a piece of clothes at $30-50 dollars, you can put it on or take it off immediately if you don’t like it; whereas if you had a bad haircut at $30-50 dollars, you have to wear it for one or two months.

My wife spends $70-80 on her hair, because she think it first improves her look and thus confidence, secondly she only cuts her hair once every 4-5 months, she thinks it is absolutely worth it.

… …

In my blog, I have previously posted my views on the Supply Chain Vision and Mission. Now to make these discussions complete, I want to talk about the Value of Supply Chain .

Wearing my Supply Chain hat and looking at the haircut decision process now, I realize that we are actually making our purchasing decisions mostly based on the value of the products (or services), but not simply on prices, quantity or even quality. And the value of a product (or a service) is a subjective experience that is different from person to person and from context to context.

In my previous posting, I mentioned the mission of supply chain is to create Shared Values between parties in the chain and ultimately deliver the maximum benefits to customers. I think it is important to highlight the word ‘Value” here, noticing it is different from a product or service in the traditional view. The Value here rather is a subjective experience that occurs at both sides of the transaction, between supplier and customers.

Therefore in my opinion, Supply Chain Value is to manage a chain of disparate functions through an integrated and holistic approach to deliver the suitable Values to customers’ satisfaction via the lowest total cost of acquisition and most effective and reliable processes.