With a requirement to deliver great service at optimum cost, leadership of the modern supply chain would be challenging enough if all just stayed the same.
But managing the ‘Today’ is only a fraction of the challenge. With so many variables at play in the medium and long term, the real task is to ensure that strategic infrastructure and operating plans exist for a wide range of commercial conditions. Following recent events, there now exists the possibility of tariff changes in two major trading regions –EU and US.
With customer service increasingly a key component of most business' offering, the less predictable commercial environment adds to the intellectual heavy lifting required to ensure that the supply chain remains optimised to serve the business – whatever appears on the horizon.
In practical terms this translates into the need for the supply chain organisational structure to have enough resource and brain power for the leadership to escape the day to day of operations and dedicate sufficient time to planning and development.
The management team should be able to identify and consider the implications of alternative scenarios, develop contingency plans, and determine and monitor the commercial conditions to trigger them.
If the leadership’s sole focus is operational KPIs or pressing customer issues, it won't take a sea change in the business environment to blow service or costs off course. Planning for the known unknowns is a key element of safeguarding the future of any business. But in intensive operational environments that are under pressure, it is all too easy to allow the planning, particularly of uncertain eventualities, to be left until tomorrow. In the current environment, that really might prove too late.
Davies & Robson has significant experience in identifying the real resource requirements for a supply chain management function and translating them into a productive structure populated by the talent and experience required.