What’s your supply chain priority?
What does it take to remain a supply chain leader? SCMR put that question to executives at four of the best-performing global supply chains. We also asked about their plans to remain at the top of their games in the year ahead. Here's what Cisco had to say.
John Kern (L) and John O’Connor (R) are part of the team leading the transformation of Cisco’s supply chain.
John Kern (L) and John O’Connor (R) are part of the team leading the transformation of Cisco’s supply chain.
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We all know who are the best performing supply chains and what they have done to reach the top rungs in their industries. After all, SCMR publishes Gartner’s annual Supply Chain Top 25 every September. But as with winning sports teams, no supply chain can rest on its laurels. The day after winning the Super Bowl, the World Series, or the Final Four, the best coaches begin preparing for the season ahead. So it is with supply chains: The best run organizations are constantly looking for the areas where they have room for improvement, as well as the innovations that may put further distance between them and the rest of the pack.
So, what are the priorities for the coming year for supply chain leaders? That’s a question we put to supply chain executives at four companies on this year’s Supply Chain Top 25: Unilever (#4), P&G (#5), Cisco (#7), and Intel (#8). The initiatives they have put at the top of their To Do lists for 2015 are diverse and reflect the broad umbrella that covers supply chain management. They may also provide food for thought for your own organization.
In the following excerpt, you can read how Cisco is investing Big Ideas to take its supply chain to a new level, including Big Data, the Cloud, Mobility and the Internet of Things.
In fact, Cisco is undergoing a transformation. For years, this tech leader, with $50 billion in revenue, was known as a networking hardware company with great software. “Buy the hardware and get the software for free,” describes Cisco’s go-to-market strategy.
Today, that strategy has been turned on its head: Software and solutions are the name of the game. “Our customers are looking for us to provide a complete software and integrated solution, and not just ship the hardware,” says John O’Connor, senior director of Supply Chain Transformation. “That’s a big shift.”
As O’Connor’s title suggests, Cisco’s supply chain is also undergoing a transformation to support its company strategy. It is not easy. First, it is a complex, distributed global network, with 18 to 20 nodes. Cisco’s internal supply chain team manages some 25,000 individuals outside the organization who are focused on Cisco’s supply chain. More importantly, Cisco has spent the last two years replacing its legacy systems with new ERP and product lifecycle management systems, a data management platform, and a logistics control tower to facilitate the changes ahead. “To continue to scale, we had to get off of the highly-customized platforms we had been using,” says John Kern, senior vice president of Supply Chain Operations.
That work laid the groundwork for investments in new strategies and technologies that will drive the company’s future. The Big Ideas include Big Data, the Cloud, Mobility and the Internet of Things. “We are thinking about the strategies and technologies that will deliver the next generation of productivity and a differentiated customer experience,” says O’Connor. They include:
The Connected Supply Chain: Cisco is working on a radical expansion of its sensing capabilities by increasing its use of RFID, barcode scanning, and sensors on the manufacturing floor and across its network. “If you think of the Internet of Things, we’re creating a comprehensive web of connectivity to pull data from people, processes, and things,” Kern says. “We want to tap into every node in our network, upstream and downstream.” By linking systems and processes, Cisco can use its control tower to automatically change production flows and reroute purchase orders in an instant.
The Mobile Supply Chain: Free the people could be the rallying cry for Cisco’s mobile strategy. Instead of working behind a desk on a PC or a Mac, Cisco wants to put its applications in the Cloud and decision-making capabilities in the hands of its supply chain personnel. “We want visibility into inventory up and down the supply chain, including inbound component inventory through product in our distribution channels, to enable our teams to use their smart phones to take real-time action.” says O’Connor.
The Analytic Supply Chain: More sensing devices and more nodes translate into more data – Big Data. That includes capturing unstructured data, like customer notes. The next step in Cisco’s transformation is to analyze that Big Data in seconds in order to make real- time decisions. The real goal is to evolve from reacting to issues after the fact, to taking proactive steps before a quality or throughput issue occurs. “We want to look at the performance of products —all the way from sub-tier components through the manufacturing and shipment of finished goods— to identify quality or production problems or to proactively identify where we have an order that may need to be expedited,” says O’Connor.
Those strategies are possible because of the core work over the last two years. “We have reliable data and a stable, mission-critical reporting environment,” O’Connor says. “Now, we can leverage those resources for the next wave of supply chain productivity.”
Click here to read the whole article from the December 2014 issue of SCMR.
About the Author
Bob Trebilcock Bob Trebilcock is the editorial director for Modern Materials Handling and an editorial advisor to Supply Chain Management Review. He has covered materials handling, technology, logistics, and supply chain topics for nearly 40 years. He is a graduate of Bowling Green State University. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at 603-852-8976.Subscribe to Supply Chain Management Review Magazine!
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Article Topics
Cisco · Gartner Top 25 · Intel · P&G · Supply Chain Management · Unilever ·It’s high time to go beyond visibility Driving supply chain flexibility in an uncertain and volatile world View More From this Issue