P & G Performs. EY Transforms.

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the July-August 2023 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

July-August 2023

Most business people have heard the phrase “move fast and break things.” But how do you move fast, break things, and remain profitable? Inside this issue of Supply Chain Management Review are the answers—we hope. We have two articles this month that address decision-making. The articles (“Chain reaction: Isn’t it nice when your supply chain just works?” and “Managing like ‘Maverick’ in today’s turbulent, dynamic environment”) approach the topic of decision-making from decidedly different perspectives, but I believe they are more similar than they appear.

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Imagine for a moment that at the height of the New England Patriot’s domination of the NFL, head coach Bill Belichick had decided to share his training methods, game preparation, and playbook with other organizations. Maybe not other NFL teams, but with college coaches who might end up competing against him in the pros or even coaches in other sports. To most, that would be unthinkable. After all, training methods and playbooks are a winning team’s secret sauce and competitive advantage. It’s how they perform year in and year out.

In many respects, that is what Procter & Gamble did a decade or so ago when it formed an alliance with EY, the global consulting firm, to share its integrated work system, or IWS, with other manufacturers. Developed, refined and documented in detail, IWS is as revered in the consumer-packaged goods world as the Toyota Production System is in the automotive industry. It’s no accident that any number of supply chain leaders at other organizations learned their craft at P&G. The analogy with TPS doesn’t end there: Just as Toyota’s best practices were shared first with its supply base and then later with companies outside of automotive, P&G opened up its intellectual property first to its supply base and is now licensing it to industries unrelated to CPG.

The alliance is an acknowledgement that transformation is hard; by some estimates, up to 70% of transformation projects fail. A successful transformation requires more than simply applying digital technologies to under-performing processes. Rather, it requires an integrated, human-centric approach that addresses people, process and technology, and is supported by an experienced partner like EY that has led other organizations through the journey; the differentiator is the added know-how of a world-class manufacturer that has been there and done that.

“The biggest benefit of the alliance is summed up in the phrase P&G performs, EY transforms,” says Craig Lyjak, a one-time P&G executive who now leads the alliance at EY, where he is a principal and global smart factory leader. “If you think about future state capabilities that many of our clients are seeking, P&G has already figured it out.” Utilizing the proven methodologies documented and ways of working documented in IWS and solutions from technology partners, EY can help a client accelerate their journey and de-risk the transformation. And by working with P&G, they can actually see what the future looks like.

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