The Next Stage of Supply Chain Excellence 

Today’s supply chain leaders have opened up huge leads over their competitors. But despite their many current advantages, they cannot ease up. A new concept—the “dynamic on-demand supply chain”—promises to significantly augment their capabilities. Building on a foundation of current best practices, the concept weaves in process improvement frameworks and “on-demand” technology. Closely adhered to, it can move the leaders— and those that want to be
leaders—to a higher plane of...Read more

"...So isn’t SCOR enough of a process framework? We do not think so. The model is effective for laying out supply chain processes, but a broader framework is necessary so that managers can more readily link supply chain improvements to the company’s strategic plan, key performance indicators (KPIs), and strategic improvement goals. By definition, SCOR is limited because it does not address processes in functions such as sales and marketing or product development, for instance. Nor does it help define the training needed to permit the model to be exploited fully or provide adequate tools and techniques for implementing the improvements that it identifies..."

Essentially, what’s needed is the kind of “enterprise process map” described by consultant Andrew Spanyi in his book Business Process Management as a Team Sport: Play It to Win!2 The map lays out the company’s governance and leadership processes, its operating processes, and enabling processes such as billing, collections, and human resources activities. It also allows managers to envision deployment of underlying technologies to support activities such as ordertaking, shipping, customer relationship, and just-in time stock replenishment

To date, such process frameworks remain a rarity....