“Move a thousand people forward a foot at a time, rather than moving one person forward by a thousand feet”
In 2007, when JetBlue left hundreds of passengers stranded on nine planes for over ten hours during an ice storm, they knew they had to make colossal business changes. They made those changes by taking a day to map out their bad weather operations on Post-It notes, identifying one thousand pain points. That’s right… One Thousand. After the next major storm, JetBlue was fiercely proud to be the first departure off the runway. Now that’s team work!
Below is your Sales and Operations. It all starts here. Change ALWAYS starts with the big picture. Yet the almost complete lack of S&OP understanding is at the very root of what ails most organizations. The dismaying part is that the people at the top think they have the answers by cutting training, laying off people or hiring incompetent, cheap or even worst… rude and disrespectful employees.
Do you really know your main pain points? Probably not! Business Planning might be doing a poor job of Product consolidation. Demand management creates forecast bias and inaccuracy. The Master Schedule becomes inaccurate therefore MRP, schedules to vendors, AND customer on time delivery suffers. It’s like watching dominos fall – bonk, bonk, bonk – your organization creates either excellence from the top or a horrible chaos.
What are you SUPPOSED TO DO?
Make sure your departments don’t work in silos and they understand the effectiveness of the entire S&OP cycle from top down. Understand what others do! Understand how individual’s roles and responsibilities fit together. Learn together and link the right people, with the right information at the right time. Please stop making changes in your processes without understanding the big picture.
Yes but HOW?
Stop talking and listening to useless theories and start doing. Map out your S&OP or Supply Chain at a high level with your key players and a box of Post-It notes. Use red or pink Post-Its to identify every pain point AND integration point where the value stream needs to be changed.
Once that’s done, identify the communities of excellence in your organization and the people that have contributed to it. They will shine during this process. Create that World Class Sales and Operation Organization that your company deserves.
It always starts with the big picture.
Please stop wasting your time making changes at the bottom that having nothing to do with your company’s mission, strategy or purpose. It just doesn’t make sense.
The power of Post-It Notes for re-engineering. Who ever knew? I’ve used them a number of times in workshops and they work beautifully.
Terry Vermeylen is hell bent on rapidly transforming your business into a World Class Operation by major transformation or by eliminating one bad habit at a time.
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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