Sustainable Supply Network

I believe ‘supply chain’ is no longer an appropriate description because the combination of market demands and disruptions have fundamentally changed the supply requirements and now demands networked capabilities to meet the normal course of business. The pandemic has highlighted this new reality in a dramatic way through the waves of disruption that have been crashing on the supply chain. These disruptions have been systematically breaking the links in the supply chain and as a result demonstrated the importance of a ‘Supply Network’ in order to sustain the supply. It is too easy to call out the initial disruption of the pandemic as a black swan, a once in a lifetime, event and we would be foolish to think this will be resolved into a ‘new normal’. The new normal will more likely than not be made up of waves of disruption that demand a new sustainable supply network to provide the framework and foundation required to support the market going forward.

The disruptions we experience regularly and with increasing frequency have highlighted the need for a resilient and sustainable supply network that can flex and connect based on the current availability and capability in real time. This has quickly become a base requirement that a significant challenge to the technology and the culture of organizations and especially the marketplace. The disruption and the resulting changed demands on the supply network require agility and resilience to respond along with the tools and methods to swiftly sense the disruption and then just as swiftly determine the appropriate reaction, or series of potential reactions, to the disruption so the network can swiftly and efficiently execute the most appropriate reaction(s). There is no longer an option to perform deep analysis and study the disruption, the market now demands immediate reaction in order to implement a repair to the network from the disruption.

This is where it gets difficult, how does your network first sense the issue and then quickly and efficiently react? The simple answer is that without a real time networked solution that incorporates artificial intelligence tools to sense the issue and then machine learning to analyze the options there is really no way for a human to react is the necessary timeframe. The key to success in this global market is a resilient and sustainable supply network that can work collaboratively across nodes and partner to react and repair the issues. The challenge is overcoming the limitations of the legacy batch processes and practices.

This is something that requires a concerted and coordinated action plan across the global supply network in order to support the market demands. The answer is definitely not bringing manufacturing back to the local market because the global supply cannot support the demand effectively or efficiently. Unfortunately, there are really no ‘easy’ answers to the challenge and on top of this, the response requires a continuous analysis is real time in order to sense and respond in a manner that addresses the issue or the disruption. Disruption in the global market is never the same reason and always requires a combination of multiple responses from multiple supply partners. This is difficult and requires a network response in real time to support the market.

Our goal should not and cannot be to build a new normal, our goal instead must be building a resilient and sustainable network of partners that collaborates to support the changing demands. This is a difficult goal that will not get easier with time. Our current supply chain tools are not architected to support a network and this must be the first step in the journey. This will be a complicated challenge that requires a significant level of collaboration to achieve. Delay will only make the transition more difficult though.

Supply Chain Elasticity

There is more and more bluster focused on the dangers of the global supply chain and the only solution is to move manufacturing back to the US. This sounds great in sound bites as an option but is really not feasible and would never move forward to be executed. There are a few significant challenges to moving manufacturing back to the US starting with the fact that no one will pay the increased cost required of products manufactured in the US. The US has been addicted to the cost savings delivered by global manufacturing and it will be next to impossible to wean off that drug. There are a number of additional challenges including; materials supply chain and people and manufacturing plant capacity that have both been redesigned based on global manufacturing capacity and cost savings.

This leaves us in a state of risk for high impact disruption from global events such as pandemic that impacts entire regions and reverberates around the world. The issue is not a global supply chain, the issue is deficient risk identification and mitigation to react and address disruptions as they surface and not after the marketplace has been disrupted. The goal is to limit the disruption to limit the impact. This requires a focus on VUCA analysis and reaction to respond and address the disruption.The solution involves a global supply chain that incorporates key process and partner backup and alternative options for the supply chain including, raw materials, plants and even transport options to reduce the risk of disruption.


This is not a simple solution though because of the diverse and continuously changing supply chain! This requires a coordinated collaborative effort that combines people, process and most of all technology in ways that support the sense and response capabilities of partners and processes across the global supply chain. Luckily, we are entering a time where advances in technology, and especially collaborative technology, can be incorporated to support the velocity of change. The waves of disruption unleashed by the pandemic have started an era of extreme VUCA requiring enhanced technology capabilities to respond with the same velocity.


This is where control tower technologies come into the picture as a means to support a coordinated collaborative response to the waves of disruption. Control tower capabilities and opportunities have come into their own, and really stepped up during the pandemic to quickly show value. With AI, machine learning and process automation added to the control tower tool box you can quickly come to the point where you can quickly meet the velocity of disruption to react to changing demands and continuous waves of disruption. You must come to accept the fact that you will never eliminate disruption, the point is to build the capabilities to sense and respond before the disruption gets out of hand.


Tom Brouillette

Contact: tom.brouillette@gmail.com



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Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.

RPA As Transitional Bridge To Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is a wide ranging and disruptive strategy that realistically will take years. This strategy will also define the framework that will regularly and continuously replace technology tools based on the changing demands and continuous waves of disruption in the market. You must accept and support this concept in order to be successful in developing a resilient supply chain that is capable of suppurting these transformation efforts. You must accept that there will always be strategic digital transformation initiatives that will focus on areas of greatest return in value. Maybe most importantly, this does not mean that you can afford to only focus on a small number of areas because you will be left behind in the dust of market disruptions.


This means that you must develop a method that will allow you to ‘bridge’ the gap between your current legacy technologies and new technologies that result from market and consumer disruption. One very robust method to bridge the gap is RPA because RPA technologies will allow you to automate processes through the use of technology tools that ‘bolt on’ integration and work flow management capabilities to legacy technologies. There are many examples of these capabilities that bring great value very quickly to your business that will allow you to focus on other strategic initiatives.


I think of RPA as a key tool in your continuous improvement process that will allow you to quickly and efficiently prove out your automation initiatives and strategy. We can no longer afford large initiatives of wholesale change and hope they meet the initiative objectives. We must have a way to prove out the process quickly and RPA provides the tool to support a more resilient and flexible supply chain.


I hear many people stating that RPA is ‘just’ a new and updated method of the old screen-scraper technology from the 90’s in an effort to detract from the technology and encourage the focus on what they feel a better long term capabilities. I am afraid that this focus on the ‘perfect’ will delay the ‘good’ of value delivered quickly through RPA. This strategy is a recipe for failure in these times of continuously changing demands and waves of market disruption. The best course is a focus on resilience and flexibility to sense and respond quickly to the disruption.


My feeling regarding this view is that we do not have time to only focus on the perfect because, quite frankly, perfection will never be achieved. There will always be the new market or customer demand, the new technology, the new application, the new business process that will require inclusion in your strategy and your operation. The focus on perfection will lead to a business failure to meet the demands of your customer and this failure will cause you to lose customers.


Instead, focus on speed of delivery using bridge technology that will allow you to prove the concept prior to a large investment. This is the space where RPA will shine and you can move your business forward while implementing a more long term solution. The first step then is to define your resilience strategy that identifies your weakness in resilience and then use this information to select and utilize a robust RPA tool.


Tom Brouillette

Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com

@ncspartners


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Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.

Transition Legacy Framework to Digital Enablement

There has been much talk about ‘getting back to normal’ and ‘new normal’ that I have been thinking quite a bit about because of the continued cycles of lockdowns and now the latest pandemic surge. These disruptions on personal lives are also impacting the business world from a loss of jobs and business closing to the continued work from home requirements. It is past that time now to accept the new reality (I refuse to call it ‘new normal’!), if you haven’t already and take the appropriate steps to live in this new reality. We are already seeing the results of change and we really need to focus now on developing and executing a digital enablement strategy. The pandemic has driven change due to health and safety concerns and these changes themselve are driving the digital transformation. This transformation is beginning to increase in velocity as consumers accept and become accustomed to the new reality and we will never go back.


Any business that directly interacts with the consumer, retail - services, restaurants, for instance, have borne the brunt of the pandemic disruptions to the point of breaking and many have been pushed past that point to failure. Consumers have changed the retail and services markets forever through digital interactions that are redefining the consumer relationship. The changes to the market are not really new, but simply and more accurately, sped up dramatically in a natural progression that has been pushed to the limit by the pandemic. The change here is the ability of consumers to shop, and more importantly, to obtain goods and services without contact, whether eCommerce and delivered to their home or via curb-side pick-up.


Retailers must now take a multi-prong approach to their digital enablement activities; they must focus on a strategy that first defines and then delivers the digital enablement while they also focus on immediate response to the waves of disruption driven in many cases from the COVID-19 transition support requirements. This is difficult for all businesses and especially difficult for the legacy retailer that was already struggling with digital enablement before the pandemic. The change and disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed digital enablement past the tipping point though and this has now suddenly become a key to survival rather than a progressive transition. Now that this genie is out of the bottle there is no going back. It is now a matter of great urgency to define and implement a digital enablement strategy.


This will be an overwhelming task if the legacy retailers treat this as ‘business as usual’ because there just is no time for them to slow-walk the changes through the organization. If the legacy retailers treat this time of disruption the same as other changes in the market they will be left in the ditch, smouldering. This requires quick actions to move forward without an idea of the end result. At this point we don’t have any idea what the end will look like because the end is being defined and redefined through waves of disruption.


These retailers must implement a strategy of continuous change. They must build a flexible framework that is able to sense and then respond to the disruption. This will require a strategy of digital enablement to be able to sense the disruption and quickly respond. Unfortunately these same legacy retailers are also struggling with labeling applications and cumbersome integration between internal applications and their external partners. The first order of business is to build a flexible framework that will support the velocity of change, while also responding to disruption.


In addition to the above, these legacy retailers do not have the time to figure this out, they must act quickly. Fortunately there are two opportunities for retailers to incorporate in order to survive; consultant organizations to help with the strategy implementation and RPA tools to help bridge the digital enablement between legacy applications and partners. The first step is recognition and the support of senior leadership. This is a huge undertaking and requires a great deal of support from many different areas to succeed and this will require support over time to fail and correct direction. Without full throated support from senior leadership this will only end in failure.


Tom Brouillette

Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com

@ncspartners


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Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.

Digital Transformation Thoughts

 

Digital transformation requires significant support from the C-Suite to ensure success.  Initiative must be lead and encouraged by C-Suite and especially CEO.  Key to remember is this is a huge change management program that will change the way the company and organization works.  This makes it critically important for CEO to display, publicly and privately, support for the program.  

C-Suite must provide resources, people and funding, to ensure success.  This must not be a 'skunk works' initiative because of the signigicance and requirement for the entire organization to be aligned and moving together.  There is a great deal of work to be done and there will be changes, and risks, along the way that must be addressed and these can only really be addressed with the support of senior management.  

This is a long-term program that requires continued support and focus in order to succeed.  This will require a robust plan and management focus in order to succeed.  This is not an program that can, or should, be delivered as a big-bang.  Digital Transformation is a discovery process that will re-invent your business and as such requires experimentation and trial and error practices to validate the tools and processes involved in the transformation. The transformation will succeed by following a continuous improvement model of PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) that supports experimentation and quick adjustments to ensure the feedback is incorporated quickly.

Digital transformation will require a transition to new processes, capabilities and software, some of which will be invented as part of the transformation.  This is a significant business and market disruption program that will grow and solidify as a result of waves of change and disruption.  This requires a tool that can support quick prototype experimentation to validate concepts.  This is where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools come into play for a significant role in the success of your program.

RPA tools provide a means to build new connections and process across multiple platforms and technology to eliminate non-value add processes and procedures.  Digital transformation is essentially the most significant Lean program that the market will take on and this requires high level encouragement and support for the business and organization to embrace.  RPA tools can provide the bridge from current business as usual to Digital Transformation.

Next big question is how can you initiate this program to increase the likelihood of success?  How can a strong and experienced supply chain consulting partner help you to build the plan that can help to ensure success?

Tom Brouillette

Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com

@ncspartners

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Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.

There Is No Normal

 

I am concerned about what I see as a strong tendency to return to the status quo rather than learn, and plan, for change as a reaction to the disruption cycles, or waves, that we are currently experiencing.  This is a tendency that I see across the US culture to return to normal when there really is no normal and I would say the normal is actually the continuous cycles of change we have experienced through history..  Its not a new normal, there really is no normal!  

In fact, in looking back you can see that businesses and governments and cultures have struggled to recognize this reality as a requirement move forward and be successful.  In fact, the business world cannot afford to ignore the waves of disruption and address the disruption by attempting to return to a perceived normal.  Maybe that is the point - there is no normal and the sooner we accept this reality, the sooner we can actually move forward and create a process that imagines risk to prepare for the disruption.

We must focus not on implementation and execution of a process that enables the business  reaction and response to continuous waves of disruption.  This process must enable moving from a single stream focus to a multi-stream focus and most importantly the process must be practiced until it becomes second nature.  This is developing a new muscle that is critical to the success of business and the market.  It seems that the majority of people and businesses are so set on returning the pre-pandemic 'normal' that they are overlooking reality and the need to develop methods that can sense and respond.  The telling point, or proof, of this observation is the seemingly never-ending series of black swan events that buffet the global market in waves.  If black swan events occur on a regular basis it means they are not by very definition black swan events.  These are rather the 'new normal' that we must first accept and then embrace and incorporate into our world vision.  

This is difficult, human nature does not want to change and that is the continuous and compelling theme for a significant number of people and by extension businesses and the market as a whole.  This is a struggle for many and our challenge is to provide the road map to sense and respond to the waves of disruption.  I think that we are reaching the point of actually creating a new series of disruptions as a result of not accepting the change and attempting to return to the previous comfort level.

This new process requires a robust risk management process that defines a business continuity program.  The goal of the risk management process is to imagine disruption and the potential for description and then determine how to respond to the disruption.  This is where multi-stream definitions and planning comes into play because as we continuously see demonstrated in real life; disruption impact is a reaction to multiple pressures and events combined to force a reaction.  This requires a risk management and business continuity program that is robust enough to first identify the potential and second identify responses to the waves of disruption that are combined based on the waves of disruption.  

A key issue and single greatest factor to the COVID-19 disruption is not the actual physical and structural disruptions but the lack of imagination and forsight to first imagine the potential and second to imagine a response.  We see this over and over - the so-called black swan even that surprises everyone.  As an example, whether you subscribe to climate change you should be developing response to the weather based disruptions we are experiencing.  

Here is the key challenge; you cannot hope to define all possible risks and define reactions for all posible impacts.  This is where the risk management process comes into play, you must define the potential of the risks and then based on the risk define the potential reaction.  Imagination of the possible allows reaction and response to the reality.  

How can you implement a robust risk mitigation program?

Tom Brouillette

Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com

@ncspartners

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Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.

Benefits From COVID-19 Disruption In The Supply Chain

With each significant disruption in the supply chain and in the global market our supply chain practice and procedures must perform a lessons learned exercise to identify the areas of successful response and areas for improvement. I know it sounds counterintuitive to call out benefits however every event should be evaluated to identify areas of success and improvement. There have been areas of success in the supply chain, especially in the way that the entire supply chain reacted to the disruptions in both product types and manufacturing. There are also many areas for improvement and most importantly this pandemic has identified significant weak areas in the global supply chain. The challenge now is to look back to evaluate the disruptions to determine improvements to incorporate in both sensing and responding to the disruption.

First let me call out that I believe the disruptions in the global supply chain are the result of poor risk analysis and business continuity responses to disruption. The overarching answer is not moving the supply to local manufacturing but to implement improvements in the process and procedures for sense and response to disruption. We know that the impact of a pandemic can and should be defined and practiced, while we can’t tell the exact nature of a pandemic, we can plan for a pandemic response. We also know that the global supply chain has grown and developed as a result of the global market demands on the supply and there is no easy answer to the challenge, especially moving manufacturing locally!

We have learned some key findings from this regarding the importance of the response to the disruption that could reduce the impact in the future. These are the factors that must be documented and a process implemented to review the market conditions on a regular basis. I believe that we have let the supply chain become fragile and brittle as a result of a focus on cost only. One learning or benefit from the experience is the need to plan for disruption of many types and combinations to improve supply chain resiliency. There are two factors that improve the resiliency of the supply chain;

Risk and response analysis is critical to the successful response to any disruption. This is a complex exercise because it requires imagination to identify the potential risk and then another type of imagination to define the response to the disruption. This is a major area of improvement.

Supply chain partner collaboration is another critical success factor to the response to any disruption. We have seen improvements in supply chain partner collaboration recently, however it has not been nearly fast enough, nor far enough. The supply chain is just that a chain of links from partner to partner that must work together to successfully support the market. The supply chain activities have met the challenge of the global market, however, the partners have refrained from extending and growing the collaboration that is necessary to react to significant disruption.

The future success of the global supply chain is based on the ability to quickly sense and respond to disruption, and more importantly multiple combinations of disruption. This is where process automation and analytics come into play. This is also the same areas showing dramatic increases in interest and expanded implementation. We must be careful in our response and strategic planning that we focus on flexibility and resilience when developing our strategic plan and reactions to the multiple disruptions. We have the process in place for the process automation and this has become critical to the response to the disruption. We must now develop the analytics to allow us to sense the disruption before significant impact and define the potential responses to any disruption. The third point that cannot be shorted is expanding collaborative practices across the extended global supply chain to improve response and reaction time to the disruption.

What steps have you taken to evaluate your response to the pandemic and identify areas of improvement?

Tom Brouillette
Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com

@ncspartners

Thank you for reading my post on Linkedin in addition, Here at my blog I regularly write about management and technology trends. To read my future posts on LinkedIn click 'Follow'


Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.

Risk Scenario Analysis

Risk scenario analysis requires imagination and most importantly collaborative brainstorming in order to identify all risks, even and especially risks that today seem outlandish. As an example, I would have never considered Amazon stopping non-essential product shipments but this is exactly what was enacted as a response to this pandemic. One of the consequences of this action has been a significant impact on small businesses that utilize Amazon for their warehouse and order filling support. This in-tern impacted the success of a great deal of small businesses that were dependant on the Amazon fulfillment services which impacted the livelihood of many employees along with the success of the small business. This then fed into the overall economic impact from the pandemic. This is a great example of the relationships and overall impact of seemingly unrelated decisions on a wide range of people and businesses.

The above example is the key reason why it is so important to perform robust risk scenario analysis. In the example above the impacted businesses now must evaluate the risk of the fulfillment disruption and how they can react to this disruption to support their business. Business must develop a strategic risk management process that views scenarios for any and all risk to the business. Starting in the beginning of this yea the waves of disruption experienced to date have shown that you cannot eliminate a risk because it will never happen. We have gone through a series of disruptions that previously were simply unimaginable as a real risk and so there were no response strategies developed.

The first step is to identify and fully document the risk scenario. This means that the risk scenario must not only identify the potential risk, it must also identify the potential impact to the market and also the business. The definition of the risk is not complete though until you have identified and documented how to sense the risk so that you can execute your planned response. This means that you should identify and document 'outlandish' risks as well as generally accepted risks. The outlandish risk may never materialize however it is important to call out the scenario so that you can take steps to minimize the potential as well as prepare for the realization of the risk.

This is an important point - one of the objectives of the strategic risk analysis and a key outcome are steps that can be taken that will minimize the potential for the risk. This is a concept that needs to become a focus of every risk mitigation strategy because the best way to react to a risk is to eliminate the cause of the risk. Simply defining the risk and the potential impact to the market in general and your business specifically will help to identify how to sense the risk. This exercise of risk identification and early recognition will provide the framework to define the steps necessary to eliminate the risk from occurring.

Risk scenario analysis and mitigation has always been an important aspect of project planning and management. We must institute this same practice now in the supply chain management and business continuity process. As a result of the rate and impact of disruption hitting the market and businesses we must recognize that risk analysis can no longer be viewed as an inward facing exercise. As a result of the disruptions hitting this year we must finally recognize that business continuity must be and outward facing strategy that recognizes early the factors developing of the disruption and takes steps to mitigate and avert major impact.

Tom Brouillette

Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com

@ncspartners

Strategic Risk Management To Counter VUCA

Hope For The Best And Plan For The Worst should be a consistent and shared mantra for all businesses as a means to focus on strategic risk management. The importance of this has increased to the highest level as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the activities to both recover and prepare for the next disruption. This requires a significant investment in strategic risk mitigation definition and development and must include partner risk management in the scenario development and risk mitigation strategy. This includes all partners and integrations in the extended supply chain. The weakest link in the supply chain will continuously change depending on the type of disruption and your strategic risk scenarios must be developed to define a response for all scenarios.

One critical activity, or requirement, is implementing a regular risk scenario review process that evaluates the likelihood of scenarios and most importantly, new scenarios. As we have seen from the many disruptions experienced so far this year risk scenarios and potential changes continuously with new risks rising and other risks declining and disappearing. You will never in a million years be able to identify all risks, and the point is that a regular review process provides the means to review so that you can add and remove scenarios as necessary.

The next activity is developing and implementing the appropriate data analytics capabilities that will support the ability to sense the reactions to disruptions and most importantly, the reaction to combinations of disruptions. The risk scenarios must identify the reactions to combinations of disruptions and then you must have a means to measure the responses. This is where data analytics comes into play, along with a healthy helping of imagination. Different disruptions and combinations of disruptions will cause different reactions in the supply chain and these reactions must be identified quickly in order to determine the appropriate response. The risk scenario identification and evaluation is important but it is based on assumptions and personal viewpoints of the team that developed the scenarios. Data analytics brings the facts to the table to help to determine the appropriate response.

The glue that connects these processes and activities is imagination. Risk scenarios require imagination to create, risk response exercises require imagination to develop, data analytics requires imagination to develop the queries and identify the appropriate data and source to identify the reaction to the disruption and then to validate the effectiveness of the response. As you can imagine, this is not a ‘once-and-done’ exercise. This requires continuous review and evaluation in order to grow and evolve with the market and the supply chain. Each disruption and reaction to the disruption creates a new reality stream that changes scenarios and potential for disruption and it is important to continuously evaluate and develop new scenarios.

Data analytics is a very nebulous practice that requires continuous experimentation and evaluation to validate assumptions. The data analytics initially produces the outcome reaction to disruption and combinations. This is only the start, however, because after identification of the outcome you must then try to trace back the results through the responses and combination of responses if you want to tie them back to a particular disruption. I’m not sure that it is critical to tie everything back to a specific disruption though. The point of this whole exercise is to identify a reaction to mitigate the specific business disruption that has occurred and this should be the initial focus. After the mitigation exercise you will need to go back and evaluate the actions that resulted in the disruption on another day.

Tom Brouillette

Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com

@ncspartners

Supply Chain Strategy For COVID-19 VUCA

While the COVID-19 pandemic is certainly the most significant disruption that the world is facing, it is by no means the only disruption the world and especially the supply chain is facing.  In fact, the level of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) has increased over the last 5 - 8 years through a series of natural disasters, political unrest and most recently of course the pandemic.  What we must learn is not how to address specific disruption events, we must instead develop a strategic plan that identifies potential disruption events that may or may not occur and then identify potential responses that can be selected singly or grouped to respond to the disruption.  

This VUCA response strategy is simply a more robust business continuity plan.  This is dramatically over-simplified, I understand, however what I am focused on is the definition of continuity which has been an established practice for a long time.  This VUCA response strategy requires a more robust process that defines every type of response for every type of disruption that would then be reviewed on a regular basis to validate and update.  This enhanced response strategy must be incorporated as part of the regular continuous improvement process to analyze not only potential process improvement but also potential disruption.  The risk analysis must become part of the regular process for the business and especially the supply chain to allow for a well thought out response that will reduce the impact of the disruption.

I know that many think - how can you evaluate potential risk of a disruption such as a pandemic?  The evaluation is not based on any specific type of risk, it is based on potential impact if and when any service, supplier (especially raw materials or parts suppliers in manufacturing), transportation partner or customer is suddenly shut down.  Another very critical aspect to the risk analysis is the impact sudden changes in package quantity when specific areas of demand are impacted.  For instance, when institutional demand dried up as a result fo COVID-19 and dairy farmers were forced to discard milk.  The risk analysis and continuity planning must focus on the areas of impact and not the impact event in order to be effective and support the needs of your business. 

The continuity analysis and planning must be planned and executed as a continuous process that is reviewed on a quarterly basis and the events that can impact the business must then be reviewed to confirm that the potential impacts are still valid and also review and the response is still valid and most importantly, the triggering events analysis and review process is still valid.  With the increase in business threatening disruptions it is critical to get ahead of the events as much as possible so that the reaction to the event can be triggered in a time frame that will control and limit the impact of the disruption.  The best time to plan for the response to a disruption is before the disruption occurs!

We have entered into a time of VUCA that will continue to impact professional practices and capabilities and then this will carry over into the personal side as well.  Everything is connected and there is a ripple effect across industries that must be anticipated.  It is no longer acceptable to say - who would have expected this type of disruption?  We all must be prepared for disruption of any kind that may occur and then have a response planned and ready to implement.

COVID-19 Disruption Demands Supply Chain Elasticity

The time to react to an extreme disruption such as the COVID-19 pandemic is not when the pandemic is imminent, or in the midst of the pandemic. The time to react is before the pandemic, or the disruption event, to prepare reactions based on the potential. This enables your organization to identify and evaluate potential reactions prior to the event and this dramatically reduces reaction and also ensures appropriate and effective reaction. Reaction to a disruption requires elasticity in the process and the organization in order to bend and stretch rather than break. Reaction to disruption also requires the ability to sense the disruption in time to react.

Recently there is a great deal of bluster focused on the dangers of the global supply chain that suggests the only way to eliminate the risk is to move manufacturing back to the US. This sounds great in a sound bite but is really not feasible and would never move forward. There are a few significant challenges to moving manufacturing back to the US starting with the challenge of an increased cost resulting from

products manufactured in the US. The US has been addicted to the cost savings delivered by global manufacturing and it will be next to impossible to wean off that drug. The other challenge is the people and manufacturing capacity that would be required to meet the consumer demand.

The appropriate solution involves a flexible and nimble global supply chain that incorporates backup and alternative options for both raw materials, manufacturing plants and even transport options to reduce the risk of disruption. The issue is not a global supply chain, the issue is the deficient risk identification and mitigation to react and address disruption. This requires a focus on analysis and reaction to respond and resolve the disruption. The supply chain must be able to react to difficult situations and conditions best described as VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) that requires the continuous ability to sense and react to disruption as it materializes.

As an industry we have implemented the process and the tools to respond to disruptions to ensure business continuity and now the use of these tools must be extended in order to react to the VUCA earlier in order to limit the business disruption. The challenge for the industry is the early planning and preparation for VUCA events so the reaction can be predetermined and practiced so the disruption can be limited. This requires robust tools and capabilities to sense the disruption earlier to allow time to implement the business continuity procedures.

The business continuity procedures must be predefined and practiced regularly so that they can be executed quickly and efficiently in response when the disruption is identified. This is standard operating procedures for businesses in the supply chain. One of the new factors to this continuing challenge is the types of disruption and the ‘surprise’ of the disruption. I think sensing and responding to VUCA must be the key starting point to business continuity. The definition of business disruption must be expanded to focus on VUCA and the analytics must be improved. The business continuity is not all or nothing and should be viewed as modules that should be engaged depending on the situation.

We must accept the fact that we have entered a time of extreme disruption and must focus on the ability to sense the disruption and quickly implement the response to the disruption. This means the business continuity procedures must be extended to be utilized in response more efficiently to the disruption. The first step though is focus on sensing the disruption! This is where tools and technology will play a key role, including advanced analytics and artificial intelligence and even process automation.

Business Continuity In Extreme Disruption

The coronavirus pandemic is another Black Swan event that highlights the importance of a robust and flexible business continuity plan that utilizes big data analytics technology and artificial intelligence to support a reactive and flexible framework rather than a structured process of recovery. We see a discontinuous river of disruptive events that are impacting the supply chain along with businesses and customers and the reactions to these events must be swift in order to limit the impact. The world will not slow down and in fact will only speed up in the types of disruptive events that must be addressed in creative and flexible ways.

The seemingly continuous stream of Black Swan events speaks to the need to sense and respond to these events to limit or even eliminate the impact. Early detection and response to the pending event dramatically reduces the impact of the event and this should be the goal going forward! It makes no sense at all to develop a quick response system that leaps into action when the impact is upon us. This goal of early detection requires a focus on risk analysis and that allows early detection in order to act before the crisis. I suggest that a key to the rise and frequency in Black Swan events is due in large part to a lack of focus on detection.

This is the reason I have been focused on the continuous improvement practice of sense and response. The supply chain is in the position of canary in the coal mine and the continuous improvement practice including and focused on robust identification, or sensing, analytics to sense the coming disruption early in order to respond early. The goal should be in risk identification and then analysis of the pending impact and most importantly the likelihood of the risk manifesting itself. After the 5th ‘500 year flood’ it's time to understand and take action to focus on risk analysis and early detection!

This increased importance of sensing the disruption requires an increased focus on risk management and especially risk identification as a key area of identification in the continuous improvement process. This is a big change in focus from short term cost control to risk and disruption control. Focus on risk and disruption control will increase supply chain costs however will reduce disruption impact. This reduction in impact will in the long term reduce costs of the impact on the supply chain and the economy.

The challenge for risk management is incorporating the lessons in day-to-day supply chain management and especially the extended supply chain. The correct answer to the global disruption is not eliminating global manufacturing and the global market, the correct answer to global disruption is early detection and risk management plans to address the disruption. This means alternative supply chain capabilities for materials, manufacturing plants and delivery. These all would produce different effects on the success of reaction to the disruption and each of these require focus on risk and cost analysis to identify when it makes sense, financially and production-wise to make the change.

Unfortunately we are in an age of quick and easy answers and this does not work well in a global economy and supply chain. This requires a level of continuous effort to monitor and analyze the risks and likelihood of occurrence. This process of risk mitigation must be incorporated in the regular review and analysis process of the continuous improvement practice. The good news, in my opinion, is that this risk mitigation can be supported more accurately and quickly by embracing data analytics improvements brought about through artificial intelligence technologies. This is a baseline requirement to the effective analysis of the amounts of data available!

Disruptive Forces In The Supply Chain

There are so many factors driving transformation and disruption in the supply chain that we have moved from a model of discontinuous change to a model of discontinuous disruption.

The disruptions in the supply chain now are driven by the developments and incorporation of new capabilities that are more and more identified and developed utilizing the information and capabilities delivered by data analytics and artificial intelligence technologies. The pieces of technologies are being brought together through the immense amount of data and abilities to fully utilize the data that themselves have been made possible by technology. In the same way that technologies have allowed consumers to mold their professional interactions to meet their lifestyle needs, technology is also supporting the supply chain and extended partners to meet the supply chain business interaction and operational needs.

In a very real way consumers are driving the disruption through their embrace of technology combined with increased network capabilities that are blending their interactions across every corner of their professional interactions. Supply chain leaders and partners have embraced growth in data analytics that is made possible by technology improvements in data storage, network improvements to move the data and then most importantly the computing power improvements to drive the data analytics capabilities to analyze the data to understand and define direction and capabilities required to improve the supply chain to meet the demands. The supply chain supports the consumer demands across all industries and the computing power along with the network capabilities available to every individual across the supply chain is driving the discontinuous disruption.

The pieces of discontinuous disruption have been developed and also been growing in their use in the supply chain starting with the growth of the Internet of Things technologies and tools and naturally expanding in the supply chain arena into automation of processes and then add to this the robotic movement that is growing now, especially in the third party logistics industry and you can see that these pieces required a technology and capability to coordinate and connect the dots. All of these technologies are collecting immense amounts of data for the supply chain to utilize to improve the services and increase their capabilities without necessarily increasing the long term costs.

Supply chain leaders are using these technologies and really driven by their own imagination and questioning ‘why not’ to drive this growth and expansion of supply chain processes and operational improvements and most importantly efficiencies. These technologies are disrupting through the implementation and growth of automated operational and process improvements that are driving efficiencies into the supply chain. The true disruption innovation in the supply chain is the imagination that has been released through the implementation of these technologies that are driven in large part by the improvements in analytics and computing power to release and encourage this imaginative approach to disruption.

This is the amazing thing in my opinion, that the consumer is at the center driving the disruption into the supply chain industry based on their demonstrated imagination and use of technologies to put together their own solutions. These strong outside influences are driving the basic need for the supply chain to understand and maintain the velocity of disruption in processes operations and especially functionality in order to meet the consumer and market demands. Most importantly, though is the continuous improvement process and data analytics capabilities that must be implemented to allow the supply chain to sense and respond to the disruption that is now impacting the supply chain marketplace.

Disruption Driving Transformation Of The Supply Chain

 

Disruption displaces an existing market or industry to produce something new and more efficient and worthwhile. It is at once destructive and creative. Disruption in the marketplace is driving a transformation of the supply chain into a more efficient and flexible framework that can support the continuous disrupting forces. This transformation of the supply chain is driven not only by reaction to disrupting forces in the marketplace but also from the enabling technologies developing at a breakneck pace.

Historically, supply chain disruption has been described as a major breakdown in production or distribution nodes that comprise a supply chain. This definition of disruption implies an event within the supply chain that interrupts the normal process and flow that must be overcome to return to the pre-event state. However, technologies, especially eCommerce technology, coupled with improvements in network capabilities that are driven by consumer lifestyle demands have redefined disruption into a break that will never return to the pre-disruption normal, the disruption creates a new normal.

NOTE: The COVID-19 disruption is another example of disruption driven by consumer demands, in this case though there are additional disrupting factors that add to the equation. These factors include disruption in the manufacturing capabilities and also, more importantly, business continuity disruption that has highlighted the brittle nature of the pre-COVID-19 extended supply chain.

This process of recovery into a new normal is what makes up innovation and new capabilities for the market. Rather than a recovery to the pre-disruption state, the disruption produces a recognition of a need for innovation and change based on the market demands for innovation in the process. Disruptive innovations tend to be produced by outsiders and entrepreneurs in startups, rather than existing companies. This innovation cycle is now driven by consumer lifestyle demands colliding with the existing market practices creating an innovation cycle. This innovation cycle disrupted the continuous improvement cycled to a continuous innovation cycle and the market leaders recognized and adjusted to the change.

Currently, the waves of innovation in the market are driven by supply chain participants recognizing and developing features and functionality designed to meet customer expectations, partner needs and financial requirements. Supply chain disruption is the repurposing and realigning of existing capabilities to support changing consumer lifestyle demands. Then, just for good measure, the great disruptors add new supply chain capabilities to enhance the innovation.

The best change agents in the extended supply chain implement these features and functionality before the consumer recognizes the need. This drive to experiment based on sensing a market shift that creates the demand for goods and services is the actual driving force of disruptive innovation in the market. Disruptive innovation in the supply chain is a leading influence in remaking the market to meet consumer demands. Consumer demands are being driven at an enormous speed and this velocity of change requires robust tools and practices to react. I believe the supply chain is particularly ready and capable to develop these required tools and capabilities because of the history of disruption within the supply chain.

Shifting demands from all corners of the market—ranging from product and consumer services to supply chain partners—contribute to supply chain disruption and in turn are driving innovation in the supply chain as a reaction. Consumers as the ‘Great Disruptor’ in the marketplace and are driving the supply chain to innovate in capabilities and flexibility in order to react to the disruption. The supply chain innovators are driven by a spirit of experimentation that in turn allows them to innovate in the face of the discontinuous disruption. The best of the innovators incorporate the continuous improvement (PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Act) practice to support the innovation cycles driven by the disruption.

This transformation will only increase in speed as disruption drives new disruption. We have entered an age of disruptive transformation driven by the demands of the market that is no longer accepting the status quo. In order to survive in the age of disruptive transformation the market partners must also embrace a practice of experimentation based on flexibility.

Supply Chain Reshaped By COVID-19 Disruption

There is no question that the Coronavirus has disrupted the world and in the face of all this disruption, the supply chain is being reshaped in reaction to the waves of disruption started by this pandemic. It is safe to say that the world social and economic order has been turned upside down during this time in reaction to the speed and the range of disruption driven by this virus. There has been no area left untouched at this point and the focus is on reaction and adjustments in reaction to the disruption. This requires more than ever extreme flexibility and robust collaboration and communication to sense and respond to the disruption.

I firmly believe that one of the key strengths developed over the years on the extended supply chain is the ability to sense and respond to disruption in a manner that efficiently identifies disrupting factors and resolves through a robust process of continuous improvement. The baseline tools, practices and procedures are in place to respond to the disruption and these have really been the foundation framework that has helped the supply chain to respond and continue to support the market.

The question now is - What process and procedures should be incorporated to allow the extended supply chain to support the multi-faceted waves of disruption that will continue?


These are some key factors that will support the velocity and impact of disruption:

First and foremost is robust, open and holistic collaboration practices. This is key to the ‘sense’ process in sense and response to the disruptions. This requires open sharing of information collected from all quarters in order to better understand relationships and impact of the disruption. Without the collaborative practices the response portion of sense and respond runs a great risk of reaction to the wrong cause of the disruption.

Data collection and analysis provides the information and identifies the relationships that are driving the disruption. There is really nothing new to the level of importance of data in the ability to first sense the disruption and then determine the cause and identify a reaction to the disruption.

Define and implement actions and change based on the data analysis in response to the disruption. One key to the implementation of change is the realization and acceptance that there is no silver bullet that will address the disruption. The disruption is fluid and the changes and reaction must be fluid as well!

The reaction in the system to the change must be reviewed and validated to confirm the response to the change provided a positive impact. This is starting the process over again.

Finally, the most important factor now is speed of reaction! This means multithreading reactions and actions with the analysis of the data. There are two key tool in this time to analyze reactions; the use of Artificial Intelligence and robust collaborative practices.

The guiding factor in this time of disruption must be ‘Don’t Panic and Respond to Data’! This will be the most difficult and greatest time of disruption and when you add the cultural and health disruption to this business disruption the impact can initially seem overwhelming. In order to overcome this feeling we must identify a program that includes a process of actions to address the disruption. We should be using the experience gained over the recent years driven by business and consumer disruption in order to meet the demands of the current disruption.

Robotic Process Automation And You

Robotic process automation is a capability segment that is growing quickly in large part because of the speed in which it can be delivered with limited risk. This is a natural progression to the growing autonomous automation capabilities including robotics. This next logical step of business process improvements combines business process analysis and improvements with software robots identified and driven by artificial intelligence tools and workers. Combine the potential benefits with the limited risk and the robotic process automation provides a very alluring opportunity to quickly add benefits and efficiencies to processes in the operation.



The challenge in the operation is continuous pressure on improvements in efficiencies; to do more work with less human interaction. Unfortunately for the operation, and logistics in the supply chain, robotic implementation can be very disruptive because of the dramatic change to the operation. This is where robotic process automation can bring value to automate the existing process without dramatic disruption. This will provide the opportunity to improve efficiencies while the disruptive projects can be implemented. In fact, I would suggest that robotic process automation be viewed as the first step in a robotic strategy because it provides the first step to proving the automation.



Within the operation the greatest disruption is brought about by the dramatic and sudden change that is demonstrated by physical robotic implementation in the warehouse operations. Robotics not only disrupt the operation and the process and flow of people and operations, it also disrupts the physical layout of the warehouse resulting from the robotics implementation. While there have been dramatic increases in efficiencies, volume and accuracy this must be tempered, initially at least, with the disruption in the warehouse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong advocate of automation to improve the operation, I am only saying you must go into this with eyes wide open to understand and plan for the holistic impact to the operations.



Robotic process automation allows for a trial at increased automation to improve the efficiencies of the operation without dramatic change. This is a benefit not only to the operation, it is also a benefits strategic planning by providing a point of validation for the automation. This is a critical benefit because of the investment required for increased automation with autonomous robotics. The resulting increased efficiencies delivered by robotic process automation allow for a refocus by the operation to more complicated processes that may be more difficult to automate or require autonomous robotic automation.



Automation is a multi-faceted opportunity for improvement and must be viewed as such in strategic planning and strategic initiatives. The organization and operation especially must evaluate options based on the process and automation opportunity, all processes will not achieve improvement from the same automation tool. This is why it is so important to implement a robust and forward thinking strategic planning process to help identify the improvements.



Automation is another flavor of process evaluation and improvement that brings a new set of tools to the toolbox. It must be remembered that these tools excel in different scenarios and situations and the strategic planning process must be a focus to incorporate these new tools as appropriate. This incorporation of new tools is critical to the long term success of an organization and especially now considering the velocity of disruption. There is no time to wait and see how others use the tools. The key to success is embracing a strategic process that experiments and looks toward incremental change to stay ahead of disruption. Disruption is the tipping point of incremental change, unfortunately it is tool late to react to disruption and best case scenario is creating your own disruption.

Generation AI Influence On The Market

Artificial Intelligence has greatly impacted the supply chain and ‘you ain’t seen nothin yet’ as they say. The market disruption is driven by the combination of consumer embrace of technology and the growing embrace from technology savvy, older generations in the market and the workforce. These converging influences are driving the supply chain now to incorporate these same new technologies in combination with artificial intelligence in order to sense and respond to the disruption. Disruption in the market will only increase because of technology capability improvements and the imagination of the consumer. This imagination and experimentation will increase the disruption as the new generations increase their involvement in the market.

We are seeing now a dramatic increase in market participation by millennials and gen-x and in turn the market must be prepared to incorporate their reactions and demands. As for sensing the demands, there is so much information available now in the market based on the online habits that there is really no way to sift through this vast amount of data to succeed in reacting and meeting the demands without Artificial Intelligence. We are seeing now the results of poor the poor sense and respond capabilities in the marketplace with legacy brick and mortar retailers struggling with the disruption and lurching from one attempt to react to another. The market itself and the consumers have moved on before these retailers can react. This is essentially a real time demonstration of the disruption in action and this will only increase in velocity.

The key disrupting factor now is mobile technology and how the younger generations are using this technology to support their lifestyle demands. This disruption has increased in velocity as the concepts are proven by early adopters and then spread through other consumer groups. Based on the embrace of mobile technology, what was once a strategic weapon is now almost a strategic albatross, I’m speaking of the number of brick and mortar stores. This embrace of mobile technology requires an equal embrace of the omni channel shopping experience by the large retailers. The current major disruption rolling through the retail market is related to the demands of consumers for a true omni channel experience. The retailers struggling are the larger retailers that have been slow to invest in technology to develop the experience.

Now we are seeing the results of this shopping disruption, especially in the large department store sector, where the early adapters are succeeding and the late adaptors are struggling! The struggling retailers are seeing the results of previous strategic practices to hold off on investment until the market settles and the winning technology has been selected by the market. As a result of the velocity of change in technology and use of the technology the winning technology is not selected by the market, instead the technology is embraced and usage of the technology modified and enhanced based on the users of the technology.

I see that the most significant disrupting factor in the market now is not related to technology use by the marketplace but related to the technology use by consumers within the market. Consumers have now turned the table on the market by developing methods that must be adopted by the market and retailers rather than the market pushing capabilities to the consumer. This is really where consumers are driving the market and this is also the most significant opportunity for a retailer such as Amazon or now Wal Mart to really reshape the relationship with the consumer and in doing this reshaping the market itself.

Data Analytics And Artificial Intelligence Driving Disruption

One of the most critical capabilities to responding to change and disruption in the marketplace is the ability to sense the change in a manner and, most importantly, timeframe that allows a response to be identified and executed. The frequency and discontinuous nature of change rocking the market requires a robust process that takes into account as many factors as possible to identify the change. This process then must describe factors and relationships to allow them to be analyzed to develop the response. The difficulty lies in the volume of data, both new and old, that must be taken into account to first identify the change and second to guide in determining a response. This is where data analytics practices utilizing artificial intelligence comes into the equation to support the business.

The two challenges; data for analytics and the actual analytics require a thoughtful strategy and approach that will allow you to sense the demands from the market in both a manner and a timeframe that will meet the velocity of change requirements. These challenges go hand-in-hand as two sides of the same coin; you cannot sense the change without a great deal of data to analyze and you cannot analyze the amount of data without the artificial intelligence to process large amounts of data.

From the data perspective it is very fortunate that the big data tools and storage technology has advanced to the stage were the collection and maintenance of the data is no longer an issue. This allows the collection of vast amounts of data available from all points of the supply chain and especially from the eCommerce channels. This data along the supply chain can now easily be captured for detailed analysis and because of the volume of data available the results of the analytics can be more accurate and more informative of trends. The important point here is the collection of data from the viewpoint that the more data the better because you never know where the analysis will take you and in order to come to a conclusion you must have the data to analyze and also prove the concept.

Ten years ago, in the early growth stages of big data, the challenge was the ability to collect and store the amounts of data for analysis and the analytic query tools to quickly perform the analysis. This required careful review of the data available to select the appropriate elements that you believed were necessary to produce the analytic results. Then the data collection required over night collection and the analytics were run to produce large reports in a daily schedule. Everything took time and you had to be careful to analyze the expected outcome. Now though because of the dramatic improvements in the technology the process and results are much more robust and immediate. Now there is no concern about the amount of data and the queries themselves are also much more interactive.

The analytics of the data presents the challenge in this equation and this is where the focus should be placed now. Artificial intelligence tools really come into play from this perspective to provide a value add to the equation. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will be a baseline requirement to allow the market to sense and then determine how to respond to the changing demands. These tools will are necessary to first sense and understand the demands of the market and then these same tools will provide the means to analyze the potential solutions and even forecast the impact to the market of change.

The key benefit of these tools is the speed of analytical results and then combine that with the delivery speed of a solution. Speed of sensing the demand and then speed of response are the objectives that must be front and center for the market and the participants in the market. All indicators based on technology lead to increased speed of demands and resulting disruption in the market and market participants will not have the time required for any manual analysis of these trends. In addition, only failure will come from participants that wait for the market to deliver a solution that they can adopt.

The participants that embrace artificial intelligence combined with machine learning will be the players that succeed and prosper in the market. The rate of failure that we have seen in the market will only increase as the velocity of changing demands increase. The good news is the building block tools to quickly and efficiently sense and respond to the increased velocity of changing demands are already available. The bad news is that the market participants must embrace the tools to develop their own practices to use the tools.

Discontinuous Demands Of The Market

Consumers are driving waves of discontinuous demands that are disrupting the market and all of the partners in the market. The cycles and the velocity of changing demands has increased as a result of the consumer embrace of technologies that allow the consumer to shape their demands based on their changing lifestyle requirements. Just as the market reacts to a set of demands it seems that the consumers shift and change the demands again. This cycle is complicated by the combinations of generational, technology and lifestyle priorities. The market must implement the process and tools to sense and respond to the demands in a manner that allows them to maintain the pace of the discontinuous demands.

Millennials and Gen X’ers are entering and as a result of their entrance are impacting the market in a big way as a result of their comfort with technology and their imagination in supporting and even creating their lifestyle demands. These millennial and Gen X’er generations are the ‘tip of the spear’ in utilizing technology to create new ways to meet their demands. They are also a significant reason for the decline of department stores, large retailers and brick and mortar stores that is especially demonstrated in reductions in mall and store traffic.

The largest impact though is from the baby boomers embrace of technology and capabilities. This generation is a quick learner and perhaps most importantly from a market impact perspective they are also quick to embrace new trends and capabilities. Technology provides the opportunity to explore and rebuild a market and a very large number of baby boomers are searching for ways to support their lifestyle demands. In addition, baby boomers are not afraid of technology and as a result are quick adaptors to new technologies and capabilities that can address their demands.

Technology is the great equalizer in the market from both the consumer and the partners supplying the consumer. The combination of generations and their propensity to new demands and quick adaptation of new capabilities has dramatically shortened the change cycles. This, in turn, has left the market struggling to maintain and react. This cycle and resulting impact is quickening and bringing with it a faster disruption to the market that must be addressed in order to survive.

The change cycle has reached the point now where there is really no time for the market to adjust and extend the new capabilities across partners. The cycle has reached the point where the market must react quickly or fall behind. Falling behind can be the beginning of the end though because of the difficulty in catching up with the market.

This is where the importance of the collaborative social network practices come into play for the market to allow the partners to collaborate in reaction to meet the market demands. In other words, a strong collaborative network allows the partners to react and adjust to changing demands more efficiently and quickly. This is where the social networking technologies and practices make a big impact on the market reaction.

Social network technologies combined with big data and artificial intelligence analytics provide the capabilities to sense change in market demands more efficiently and earlier to allow for reaction time by the partners. Collaborative practices and tools allow partners to react in a manner that does not require each partner to develop a reaction to the demand. Instead the collaborative practices allow partners to take advantage of the specialties of each partner in reaction to the changing demands. The strength of the collaborative network allows market reaction to demands at the speed of the changing demands.

The greatest difficulty though is overcoming cultural practices that historically have viewed the changes in meeting demands as a trade secret to create a competitive demand. The culture needs to change to increase sharing and collaboration to sense and react to the changing demands. The competitive advantage is in the sharing and collaboration to allow the partner to more quickly react to the demands.

The measures especially utilizing collaborative practices to respond to the changing market demands are not overwhelming. These collaborative practices have been utilized for years in the extended supply chain as a means to react and respond to changing demands. The difficult actions from the market reaction perspective have been related to cultural practices both in the market and in the responses to the market demands. This has shown that overcoming cultural challenges in market leadership will be the number one challenge and delays or continuing in the same cultural practices will only cause the continual decline for these current leaders in the market.