Supply Chain Leadership - Distinctive Approaches to Innovation, Collaboration, and Talent Alignment

The distinctive supply chain
Imagine you’re the leader of a global business (maybe you are) and an exciting new opportunity arises — perhaps a new market opens up just as your product development team is engineering a breakthrough product. To grab this chance, you will need strong supply chain management.

But let’s say the new market is a tricky one, and your license to operate there depends in part on your local footprint. Let’s say consumers there are price-sensitive — but at the same time demanding when it comes to service. And let’s say the new product calls for a large variety of subcomponents, and forecasting demand for it is proving difficult. In a word, things are complicated.

Are you confident your supply chain organization can rise to the challenge? Do you, in fact, know how well it is managing what it has to deal with already?

There are no absolutes in operations — advantages are always relative. Does your supply chain performance make you a leader or a follower?

At a fundamental level, companies compete on their supply chain capabilities. How they manage the activities involved in planning, sourcing, making, and delivering goods determines their costs, quality, and agility in responding to customer and market needs. In an increasingly global business environment, that competition never gets easier.

The bar only rises. Managers must always stay apprised of the new strategic and operational challenges arising, and informed about the most effective solutions their competitors are using to address them.

To help illuminate the strategies and processes employed by Supply Chain Leaders (SC Leaders), and how they differ from Supply Chain Followers (SC Followers), Deloitte Consulting LLP conducted its 2014 Global Supply Chain Survey. It captures the input of more than 400 executives in manufacturing and retail companies around the world, and reveals the distinctive supply chain approaches associated with high supply chain performance.