Supply Chain Manager or Fire Fighter?
Supply Chain managers are fire fighters
In our work, we meet a lot of supply chain management professionals from different companies. All very skilled and experienced in their work, we noticed the last couple of months that they also work for the fire brigade. If they tell what is on their mind at the moment, what they currently are doing, it is mainly operational driven. Solving issues. Issues like shortages of (raw) materials, personnel, quality issues, customer complaints, transportation issues. So when I ask when they started to work for the fire brigade, they look puzzled. I tell them that they are fire fighting all day and that is probably not what they are paid to do.
Most understand the point we try to make: as a supply chain professional, especially management level, you should guard the strategic intent and the tactical implications. Of course you need to be aware of the operational processes and issues, but you should have staff working for you to deal with that. And the right processes and tools in place to minimise operational disturbances and issues.
Perform the tasks you are paid for
The problem of supply chain management being dragged into operational work is that they loose sight of the bigger picture, of the strategic intent and the tactical implications. Being occupied on a daily base with issues does not leave time to create the birds eye view and make the strategic and tactical decisions. Which suppliers should we contract, which quality levels do we want to achieve, what machinery do we need to invest in, which processes can be optimised, which tooling to buy?
In most cases, the operational focus does mean that the necessary investments in the future are not made. It starts to become a vicious circle: not making the investments (time, money, other resources) does set you back, requiring more time spent on operational issues, having even less time to consider strategy. Resulting in an unhealthy operational workload, trying to balance all tasks at hand, but never being able to complete in a qualitative manner. Resulting in even lower quality, more complaints, stressed workforce, declining sales and in the end even the continuity of your business might be at stake.
Stepping out of the operation carroussel for supply chain management is a must. Look around you, what is your competitor doing, what technologies are emerging that can be used in your business, which suppliers to contact to mitigate future risks, which internal processes can be optimised? You need to innovate to keep up, to stay competitive or even outsmart your competition. Or else you will become obsolete.
What can be done about fire fighting?
Fire fighting for supply chain managers from time to time is not the issue. The constant fire fighting is. And that process needs to be stopped. But how you might ask? There a couple of ideas that come to mind:
- Hire additional staff to perform the operational tasks: that frees up your valuable time as a supply chain manager to invest in the topics that will add value to your supply chain. Like process improvements, investment in the right tools, procurement decisions.
- Start to analyse your current bottlenecks: which issues do occur the most, what are root causes and how can this be solved? And yes, that takes time out of your operational availability, but you need to invest that time to stop this madness. Once the first bottleneck has been solved, focus on the next one.
- Outsource work: for specific work, you can start to think about outsourcing that to third party suppliers. It will probably cost you more, but the third party supplier should be a specialised organisation with the expertise to support you in a faster way and with better quality then you could do yourself.
- Hire external expertise to do a thorough analysis: sometimes it is difficult to start or to see what can be improved if you are too much involved. External consultants can do an analysis of your current environment, provide a target operating model (TOM) and define a step-by-step approach to move the organisation from the current way of working to the TOM.
Being a fire fighter can be nice work if you can put out the fires and save your organisation. But as supply chain management, you need to think and act more strategically to keep your organisation as efficient and optimal performing as possible. Supply chains have never been in more turmoil as today, so you need to be able to respond quickly and be resilient. With an operational focus, you will be dealing with much more fires in the near future resulting in you loosing the battle with these operational issues.
If you want to focus more on the strategic and tactical tasks that are related to supply chain management and find it difficult to start, let us know. Lets connect and sit together to see your current challenges, the strategic intent and how to support the journey to get you there. Reach out to us (jan.veerman@planadigm.com/ +316 5188 4701) to setup a meeting.
