A Practical Framework for Strategic Planning

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the March-April 2011 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

March-April 2011

Leadership is one of the most popular topics we write about in SCMR. We all seem to be fascinated by individuals who can rally a company, a sports team, a country toward a shared goal. Yet when asked just what makes a good leader, most of us struggle with a precise answer. It's kind of: "Well I know what real leadership is when I see it." Reflecting our leadership theme this issue, we're pleased to introduce a new section of the magazine called "Talent Strategies." It's written by the experts at MIT's Center for Transportation & Logistics, which has both a depth of research and hands-on experience in…

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To develop a successful supply chain strategy, a firm must have an effective framework and methodology for strategy development. Further, this framework and methodology must assure that the firm can select those projects that will best support its supply chain strategy.

This article sets forth such a framework that incorporates both strategy setting and project selection. It’s important to emphasize up front that this framework was developed in a real-world setting. Specifically, it is based on the supply chain planning frameworks and project selection processes developed by the authors while one (Miller) worked at Warner-Lambert and Pfizer, and the second author (Liberatore) consulted on these initiatives. We implemented and employed the frameworks presented here at Warner-Lambert and Pfizer, and recommend these approaches to other practitioners seeking methodologies to organize and enhance their supply chain strategic planning and project selection processes.

To illustrate our approach, we draw on the experiences of a fictitious company called ABC Manufacturing and Distribution Inc. The ABC story is patterned after actual corporate implementations of the framework in which we were involved.

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