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Blog
Groundbreaking for a Supply Chain Neophyte
September 25, 2007
Welcome to the new Web site for Supply Chain Management Review magazine, and welcome to my blog, which I hope will offer many insights into the latest news and trends in supply chain-related practices, technology and educational opportunities.
For those who don’t know, I have a background in mainstream journalism, spending about eight years in the trenches of several daily, weekly and Sunday papers in
No, supply chain management wasn’t one of them, which led me to think I was at a disadvantage, to the point where I was afraid to ask “dumb” questions of managers in the field when I met them.
I was most self-conscious at the Logistics and Supply Chain Forum, put on by Richmond Events, back in the first week of May. I had been with the publication for less than a month, and was deathly afraid of being seen as an ignorant fool.
What stunned me the most was how many people I found in a similar position. After all, the concept of supply chain management has only really been an official buzzword in the corporate community for the past 10 years. Granted, I routinely run into plenty of SC managers out there who proudly declare to me, “I’ve been doing this for the past 30 years — before they called it supply chain management!”
Fair enough, but there are quite a few that haven’t. In fact, most managers I talk to who aren’t grizzled SC veterans have less than five years’ experience. This is the sign of some corporations that waited around to see if “supply chain management” was here to stay or a mere passing fad.
A sensible approach, but now, with more and more supply chain V.P.s out there, those same corporations are jumping to get on board. Most often, that means promoting people who were pure logistics or materials handling managers, and shoving them into the higher-level administrative SC management positions in a somewhat sink-or-swim fashion.
Those who are learning are, like me, forced to learn fast. My experiences here since April have been a crash course in SC management, and I like to think I’ve picked up quite a bit, but the journey is ongoing, of course.
Hopefully, those of you who tune in regularly may find yourselves learning along with me. For those of you who have been around the block a few times, watch this space for more about the latest developments from the supply chain world.
Posted by Sean Murphy on September 25, 2007 | Comments (0)