The New Basics of Supply Chain Management

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the May-June 2013 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

May-June 2013

While supply chain planning based on end-user demand has been applied in the B2B arena for decades, it is only now becoming practical in retail channels. But as distribution resource planning tools and techniques emerge, trading partners can now coordinate their supply chain as if only one company were managing it—effectively connecting the consumer to the factory.

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We talk glibly about change in supply chain management—continuous change, managing change, coping with change, even leading change. For all too many of us, those are only words. Truth is, though, that change in our universe is real, fundamental, and visceral.

As definitions of supply chains change, always extending and expanding, far behind are the days when our world was all about quoting rates, tendering loads, and pick/pack/on-time-shipment performance. As we have been required to get proficient in customer service, sourcing and procurement, supplier relationships, Sales & Operations Planning processes, and even occasionally integrating manufacturing to round out our planning and execution responsibilities, some of us have staggered a bit under the load.

We have bad news. Staggering under the load of these new supply chain requirements is no longer an option; we must master all of these elements as well as new ones that are certain to emerge.

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