Project-driven supply chains: Repeating the unrepeatable

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the July-August 2016 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

July-August 2016

What’s the difference between us and our competitors? Our people!” I can’t think of an organization that doesn’t publicly state that its people are its most important asset. Yet, anyone who has been in the workforce for any length of time knows that when the rubber hits the road—or something else hits the fan—people are usually the first casualty of cost cutting. It’s far easier to free up your talent for “other opportunities” than it is to close a plant or sell a fleet of trucks.

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Manufacturers are frequently called upon to build supply chains that support a single project. These one-off ventures can be subject to volatile demand, and sited in remote locations where the climate is extreme. Take, for example, a project that involved the transportation of 20 truckloads of chemicals per day within a tight delivery window to a site in the middle of a desert.

The highly uncertain nature of these temporary supply chains requires managers to be extremely inventive as they strive to meet cus¬tomers’ changing expectations.

If every project is unique, how can a chemical manufacturer develop a common methodology for building and managing supporting sup¬ply chains that minimizes cost and maximizes efficiency? Researchers at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics took on this challenge. Sponsored by a multi-national chemical company, the project called for the development of a repeatable template that could be applied to project-driven supply chains. The lessons learned can be applied outside of the chemical industry.

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