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In my last article, “The Big Supply Chain Story of 2019: Transparency and Risk” I argued that 2019 was a year of risk and uncertainty for supply chains.
Now it’s time to look forward to 2020 and prepare for the future.
A good place to start developing your supply chain technology strategy is with a tool called a SWOT Analysis.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Here’s a simple example of a SWOT Analysis for Acme Corporation, a (fictional) mid-sized company that manufactures widgets:
- Strengths: Acme has a solid position in its industry. They’re known for making quality products and have stable, long term relationships with many of their customers.
- Weaknesses: Acme’s supply chain is not very agile. They’ve gotten complaints from suppliers about paying invoices too slowly. They have inventory gathering dust in the warehouse. And they have limited visibility to shipments coming in from suppliers or going out to customers.
- Opportunities: Acme’s leaders know that new technologies could help them make improvements. But they don’t have a good understanding of how they work, how much they cost, or what it would take to implement them.
- Threats: The Acme supply chain is vulnerable to all kinds of risks. Last year, a significant customer went bankrupt, leaving Acme with unusable inventory and unpaid receivables. And one of their suppliers suffered a fire, leading to a shortage of raw materials. There are lots of other risks that could emerge at any moment, and cause major challenges for Acme. From cyber-attacks to the threat of counterfeit products, to the potential for trade wars and port strikes. The list of threats is long!
