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Vol 32 - No 03 - May 2006 Branch news: London & Southern - On Time in Full In the gracious, elegant and somewhat difficult to find surroundings of the Barnett Hill Conference Centre, Alastair Ross and Dave Carter of Supply Chain Analytics gave a reprise of their everyday story of a fictional manufacturing company in search of supply chain improvement. The structure of the presentation has been described in detail previously (see Control volume 32, number 1) so will not be repeated here. The wonder was that, beset with so many issues, Terminal Manufacturing had survived so long, but, two years after setting out on their journey, they were well on the way towards improvement. The fact that supply chain improvement requires all the stakeholders to recognise it as a business process and to assume full joint responsibility was not given sufficient emphasis in the presentation, even though it is crucial to success. A business cannot optimise its external relationships if it cannot handle those between its functional groups. There was little mention of the achievement of the company’s financial goals and delivering the business plan through the supply chain optimisation process but, given the time constraint, that was understandable, although it would have provided a good link to another presentation. The usual problems of fire starting followed by fire fighting, inadequate performance data, finger pointing and blame delegation were evident in almost every operation in the mythical Terminal Manufacturing supply chain. The techniques that were put in place to bring structure to the process were standard, but the presentation demonstrated clearly the need for high quality data, delivered in a hierarchical format to enable drill down to the level of detail required, was of paramount importance in focussing corrective action and generating KPIs for use in performance improvement. It was in the demonstration of the need for clear, consistent data and the software available to enable consolidation from multiple sources where the presentation scored. The use of a dashboard display to focus corrective actions in a management by exception approach was another key technique to ensure control effectiveness. Among the critical summary points were, looking at the complete supply chain and extending into the customer’s operations through collaborative planning and visibility across all the steps to ensure progress towards clearly set goals. The presentation was well received and generated a vigorous debate on a number of areas of concern. Much play had been made of cost saving possibilities but there was some concern in the meeting that the most keenly felt cost pressures, imports from low cost countries, could not be addressed this way even in the most successful implementations. It was explained that the initial assessment of the company’s supply chain operations and its competitive position could be used to determine a strategic direction consistent with market forces. UK companies would have to find opportunities to create added value because they would not be able to compete on price against some imported products. The difference between price and cost was illustrated by several examples where low price imports had consumed large amounts of management time and had incurred additional costs that offset much of the price gap, but the realities of the market place would continue to make life very tough for many UK companies. The evening was sponsored by the manufacturing Advisory Service who were thanked by the membership for a stimulating discussion of what is possible if the vision and drive are there. John Donoghue, MIOM Related Topics:
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