Gartner votes Apple as the top supply chain for 2013.
Steve Jobs and Tim Cook both oversaw Apples Supply Chain.
“When Cook took over the supply chain, he cut the number of component suppliers from 100 to 24, in a move to force the companies to compete for Apple’s business. Cook then shut down 10 of the 19 company warehouses to limit overstocking, and by September 1998 inventory was down from a month to only six days”
Your Leadership must have an Unquenchable Desire to Design a Simple yet Responsive Demand Driven Supply Chain
In my last article I discussed how I facilitated a workshop with 22 executives and experts. I did not censor people until we had a winning agreement on each major idea. Steve Jobs was also a master at facilitating meetings.
“I realized very early on that if you didn’t express your opinion, he would mow you down,” Cook said. “He takes contrary positions to create more discussion, because it may lead to a better result.”
In Apple he awakened his team to create a product and supply chain way beyond their dreams. He held his design teams to the highest level of excellence. Apple’s products and supply chain are labeled “insanely great.”! I’m a firm believer that the technology is always there, it’s the people that drive the change. Why aren’t you designing your supply chain to be insanely great?
You already have Specialists in the Supply Chain but very few Supply Chain Integrators. We all have Forecasting, Planning, Purchasing, and Warehousing professionals. Do your star player’s recognize the importance of unpolluted and standardized master data flowing across the supply chain? Do your people accurately understand how forecast bias affects planning and purchasing? Do they understand the disastrous consequence of the Bullwhip effect? Is your own poorly measured Master Production Schedule making your external vendors perform cartwheels and somersaults? It’s the integration points that kill your S&OP plan right from the start. The more you understand how to connect the dots, the more you contribute enormous value to the supply chain.
How you initially design a product or process has a Tremendous effect on your Supply Chain and your Warranty costs. Cars today have tremendously complex engines and the last thing you want is to remove half the engine for a light bulb change. Or spend a day undoing 20 bolts to replace a faulty wire. Can you imagine the sky rocketing warranty costs? Make your engineers responsible for the warranty costs. The same goes for your Supply Chain. One bad forecast leads to multiple meetings to reverse engineer the entire mess. Do your forecasters clearly explain the forecast model they used to damage the entre Supply chain? Was the forecast process initially designed with the supply chain in mind? Are your forecasters being held accountable for their lack of knowledge? Make them accountable. The best supply chains in the world are designed to be Demand Driven and Flexible. Think about it.
Let’s recap
- Your Leadership must have an insatiable Desire to Design the Best Demand Driven Supply Chain in the World.
- You must have Supply Chain Integrators to create a Supply chain that is World Class and Tremendously Flexible.
- How you initially design a product or process has a ripple effect from Sales Forecasting to Delivery – make everyone accountable to do it right the first time.
“(on why he is brutal to most colleagues) I’m brutally honest, because the price of admission to being in the room with me is I get to tell you your full of shit if you’re full of shit, and you get to say to me I’m full of shit, and we have some rip-roaring fights. And that keeps the B players, the bozos, from larding the organization, only the A players survive. And the people who do survive, say, ‘Yeah, he was rough.’ They say things even worse than ‘He cut in line in front of me,’ but they say, ‘This was the greatest ride I’ve ever had, and I would not give it up for anything.’”
“What happens in most companies is that you don’t keep great people under working environments where individual accomplishment is discouraged rather than encouraged. The great people leave and you end up with mediocrity. I know, because that’s how Apple was built. Apple is an Ellis Island company. Apple is built on refugees from other companies. These are the extremely bright individual contributors who were troublemakers at other companies.”
Steve Jobs
Terry Vermeylen brings 30+ years of experience in SAP and Supply Chain Process improvement. As an SAP professional and Supply Chain Architect he has worked and consulted for some of the world’s largest and most successful manufacturing companies focusing primarily on the Aerospace and Pharmaceutical industries.
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