Understanding Your Supply Chain Customers Checklist
Understanding Your Supply Chain Customers Checklist
Checklist to be used to evaluate your supply chain customers.
J. Paul Dittman. “Supply Chain Transformation: Building and Executing an Integrated Supply Chain Strategy” (McGraw-Hill, 2013), pp. 40-41.
See also Porter's 5 Forces Checklist and Growth/Share Matrix Checklist
Managing Supply Chain Risks Checklist
Managing Supply Chain Risks Checklist
Checklist to proactively manage key risks to your supply chain.
- Mark all that apply.
- Does your supply chain function in such a way that resources are committed or mobilized before they need to be (i.e. in advance of customer demand or before the next downstream step in your supply chain is ready)? If so, consider a risk management strategy of POSTPONEMENT to increase flexibility and avoid spending before it is necessary.
- Does your supply chain have opportunities that can be exploited by strategically committing resources through a process of selective risk taking? If so, consider a risk management strategy of SPECULATION to anticipate future demand.
- Does your supply chain rely on a single supplier or single market to remain profitable? If so, consider a risk management strategy of DIVERSIFICATION to give you the flexibility to adapt to outside variables that you do not have control over, such as natural disasters or drastic price increases by a supplier.
- Does your supply chain interact with or depend on any uncertain variables such as unstable markets or unreliable upstream suppliers? If so, consider a risk management strategy of AVOIDANCE through active research closely tied to strategic actions such as exit strategies from specific markets.
- Does your supply chain have opportunities for you to take control of either upstream or downstream systems, processes or decision-making? If so, consider a risk management strategy of VERTICAL INTEGRATION to minimize uncertainty in the flow of your operations.
If you marked any of the boxes above, consider employing a simple risk management methodology:
- DEFINE – Define the potential risk to your supply chain. Consider the ways in which risks are often interrelated and can therefore pose exponential threats.
- ASSESS – Measure the potential risk to your supply chain. Consider ‘hard’ financial costs and also ‘soft’ or indirect measures such as opportunity cost and employee morale.
- MITIGATE – Develop and implement an action plan to avoid risks and exploit opportunities.
- CONTROL – Monitor the action plan, document the impact, and remain flexible if results are not attained and risks are not being managed as desired. If necessary, re-define, re-assess, and re-mitigate.
J. Paul Dittman. “Supply Chain Transformation: Building and Executing an Integrated Supply Chain Strategy” (McGraw-Hill, 2013), pp. 33-42.
Just Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
Project Managers by nature like to take on new stuff. And this can be problematic. From the outset, you should have a clear picture of what needs to be achieved by your project and EVERYTHING you do needs to be focused on this end result. There are two benefits to keeping your eye (and your team member’s eyes) on the prize. The first is that people on your team are empowered to make decisions and work effectively even when the boss is not there. The second related benefit of always keeping your eye on the prize is that it increases your probability of success and achieving the desired end result.
An example to illustrate this point from Erik’s own experience involved an implementation project for a back-office system for an education institution with multiple locations. The prize at the end of this project were the organization-wide benefits. However, the school director at one of the locations was more concerned with being the first site to implement the system rather than working towards the company-wide benefits that were the true prize. This caused a problem as resources were diverted towards that individual site rather than being better utilized elsewhere and in a more evenly distributed fashion. The result was a tug-of-war to focus the resources and the client back on the true prize of the project, the company-wide benefits.
The issue was addressed and resolved during a Project Board meeting by the Project Manager with the backing of the chair.
Make Clear From the Start What a New System CANNOT Do
When implementing a new system in a project it is as important to clarify for end users what the system CANNOT do as much as what it can do.
A few years back, Erik was involved in a project to implement an upgraded back-office and conference management system for a hotel. The legacy system that needed to be upgraded had been in place for several years and was used on a daily basis by staff (end users). The new system that was selected on the project not only had new functionality but also left behind a few things with the old system.
In other words, in the old system if you could do a certain amount of things, x of these were taken care of by the new system but the other n functions were no longer available in the new system. The new system also had m new things it could do as per the image below.
The lesson learned here was that even though the five functions that were left behind were redundant and were actually a waste of time, it was not explained to the end users that this was going to happen. This ended up causing staff anxiety and angst and disrupted intial training sessions which cost both time and money as the project team was forced to go back to the drawing board with the approach to training.
This situation is a great example of how losing something can be a more powerful emotion than gaining something, how end users are affected most by project outcomes, and of course that people need to be made aware from the start what a new system CANNOT (or can no longer) do.
Manage expectations effectively!
Create Structures for Collaborative Problem-Solving
Effectively leveraging the creative and critical thinking capacity of your team requires structures. This is especially true for teams which are located in multiple locations and/or have a mixed cultural composition.