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



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.

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

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.

Manage Disruption Through Process Automation

  

In order to manage disruption it is important to focus, focus is the key to success for all strategic initiatives and programs. The challenge then becomes overcoming the day-to-day priorities and challenges that seem to continually interrupt your focus and energy. It seems to me the challenge is to define a process and incorporate tools that allow you to reduce distractions from interruptions and I see the perfect tool for this challenge to be Robotic Process Automation. Process automation capabilities has reached broad acceptance and usage to support mundane tasks in the operation and customer facing activities. This same capability and utilization can also be extremely important in the leadership suite to help maintain focus is a robust Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program.

A key responsibility of senior leadership in any organization is the development and execution of business strategy. Business strategy is the single most valued role of leadership and two things are continuously fighting to distract leadership from this responsibility:

Most significant is disruption in the business or the market. This year has provided not just several major disruptions but waves of ‘complimentary’ disruptions adding to the impact that are being driven by events from the impact of COVID-19, to environmental disruptions such as fires and now hurricane season.

Distractions to the day to day operation that in many cases are driven by aftershocks from major disruptions. Distractions can be just as impactful to the development and execution of strategies.

We are in times of VUCA and this requires focus and determination to sense and respond to disruption in a cohesive manner that enhances business strategy rather than disrupting the business strategy. The goal of senior leadership during these times must focus on limiting distractions so that leadership can remain focused on the business strategy rather than day to day operation and continuous reaction to distractions. The challenge now is to define and understand the distractions so that a response can be quickly. This is where RPA can help leadership to identify and understand the distraction so that it can be addressed with a predetermined response.

Senior leadership can be overwhelmed by the waves of day-to-day challenges and tasks and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic the related recovery plans and activities. This focus on day-to-day becomes a drain on focus that quickly slows the strategy activities and plans that effect the long term success and survival of companies. Many of these challenges and tasks may drive change into strategic plans and because of this they cannot be ignored, however RPA provides a means to identify events and disruption that may impact strategy and warrant analysis.

RPA would allow the monitoring of these many day-to-day challenges and interruptions using process and analytics for an early warning system to define and even identify potential responses to the daily challenges and priorities. This would allow leadership to maintain a greater focus on the higher value objectives of your Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program. 

 Additional benefits to a robust RPA plan include:

1. Utilization of a robust RPA program shows senior leadership commitment and support to a program that adds value at all levels
2. Provides the senior leadership team the opportunity to understand, first hand, the potential of RPA
3. Encourage senior leadership team to evangelize RPA initiatives providing personal experience as examples
4. Expansion of business dashboards that support alerts and views based on current events and defined alert levels
5. Promotes ability to focus on value add objectives and strategy

Focus may be one of the most significant benefits of RPA from a business and market perspective. I am beginning to think that one of the best and most efficient ways to demonstrate value is to increase the focus on automating repetitive tasks and activities performed by senior leadership. We see hundreds of examples and discussions on the benefit of automating repetitive processes and tasks from an operational and customer support perspective and I suggest adding senior leadership tasks and activities to this list.

Senior leadership can be overwhelmed by the waves of day-to-day challenges and tasks and especially during the COVID-19 recovery plans and activities. This focus on day-to-day challenges becomes a drain on focus that quickly slows the strategy activities and plans that effect the long term success and survival of companies, or worse lack of focus and review on current strategies risks implementing an incorrect or ineffective strategy. It seems to me that in order for the process automation trends and especially RPA trends to really push to the tipping point requires a commitment at all levels to the capabilities and the benefits of the RPA capabilities. What better way to display understanding and commitment than to incorporate and expand RPA into the executive suite. This is an important capability that could truly change the focus to allow and encourage more forward view.

A successful RPA strategy must focus on the process and must be viewed as a journey in this example of distraction management. This is because it is difficult to define potential distractions and the response automation in many cases requires refinement in order to truly complete the automation. This continuous refinement process however is one of the RPA 'super powers', RPA allows for quick iterative refinement that supports the necessary enhancements to refine response to the challenge and the distractions.

What does this mean and how can it be delivered? As with all initiatives we must start with the 'what' before we determine the 'how'.

This process automation initiative must start with a clear strategy that defines the first most critical deliverables and then as part of the continuous improvement process that is integral to the success of the process automation initiative the next step is to validate the success of the deliverables and second to confirm and refine the process automation strategy for the next steps. The key to the executive suite adoption is to define the business critical success factors and meaningful alerts that will support the business management at the senior executive level.

It is important to follow this process with the executive suite in order to demonstrate the value and the inherent importance of the process automation movement. It is also important from another perspective - to demonstrate the level of commitment from the executive suite to the organization. It seems to me that in order for the process automation trends and especially RPA trends to really push over the tipping point requires a commitment at all levels to the capabilities and the benefits of the RPA capabilities. What better way to display understanding and commitment than to incorporate and expand RPA into the executive suite.

This is an important capability that could truly change the focus to allow and encourage more forward view.


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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

Artificial Intelligence - The Common Strategic Thread

All networks, social, business, integration and collaboration, news and extended supply chain networks are all related through a common thread, data and more specifically - how is the data used to drive decisions and execution strategies? The glue then that combines the data in a manner that can be used to sense and respond to the waves of disruption in the market.

I believe that the constant running through all aspects of the market place is the discontinuous disruption that is driven by consumer embrace of technology combined with the market reactions to the consumer demands. Marketplace partners must recognize this new reality and work to incorporate methods to obtain the data necessary to feed the decision making process. The value and the accuracy is based upon the amount and types of data that are incorporated and available to the process. This precept itself drives the need and the value of collaborative analysis and data collection across the partners.

This model is especially important to the retail marketplace where the market is continuously buffeted by changing demands from consumers that are themselves driven by changing technical capabilities. These reactions and impact from technology has been a fact of life for quite some time within the extended supply chain and the pressure of reaction to disruption combined with the demands of cost containment and reductions are driving collaborative partnerships in the extended supply chain. These partnerships along with the resulting data collaboration can be used as a model for the marketplace as a whole. This is a key reason for the importance placed on the supply chain by Amazon and others would benefit greatly by embracing this practice.

In addition to the importance of collaborative data, the marketplace partners must also take into account the level of accuracy changes that occur during the life cycle of the analysis. The accuracy of the decision goes through a measurable life cycle:

• Infancy starts with sensing the potential reactions to the demands. This is an unclear time where many options can be taken in reaction to the data and the analysis. This is the beginning of experimentation to test the options.
• Mid-term or decision childhood where the options are narrowed based on additional data analysis based on the results of experimentation from the infancy stage. This is the refinement of decisions and strategy based on the results of experimentation. This is marked by refinement and addition of experiments to support analysis refinement.
• Maturity or decision adulthood where the strategy is fully formed and executed based on the refinement resulting from the data analysis. This is also where the next disrupting concept begins to form and requires the continued analysis of results from the strategy to form the new concept and strategy.
• End of life of old age where the positive results of the strategy decline and the consumer and market are driving the new disruption. This is end of the strategy value and it is equally important to be able to sense the decline of the strategy as it is to identify the beginnings of a new disrupting factor.

You can see that the process I described above follows the PDCA, continuous improvement process, which is a standard practice of the supply chain. This provides a solid framework to sense and respond to the disrupting factors and has been incorporated across a wide range of marketplace practices. The disrupting factor that drives improvements to this process is the collaborative data collection and analysis that allows the process to sense potential changes earlier and then through AI analysis provides the guidance for experimentation and validation to formulate the change to react to the disruption.

Social Networks Driving Supply Chain Disruption

Social network collaborative technologies have left a mark on the personal communications world in the way that the technologies encourage both immediate connections and in the communications capabilities between connections. You can see the impact across all areas of interaction and these tools and the new collaborative capabilities they enable have disrupted not only personal social interaction but also the retail marketplace and the extended supply chain network. The disruption in the supply chain network can be seen in all aspects of the supply chain that thrive on collaboration and interaction, in other words these capabilities have disrupted the supply chain network practices. The resulting waves of discontinuous disruption will continue to be felt across the supply chain network for a long time to come.

Social network technologies and the resulting collaboration technologies are founded on open and efficient communications through networks and across technology platforms. The extended supply chain and partners processes and procedures require open and efficient communications through networks and across technology platforms so this has been a match made in heaven. This embrace of technologies was simply waiting for the right moment of technology and extensions of network technologies and frankly imagination to rise and disrupt the supply chain.

The pieces and practices have been in place in the supply chain for a long time and really waiting for someone with the imagination and will to define and deliver the potential. The tools for communication between have been available through EDI technologies, for instance. These technologies have been enhanced though to support extended connectivity demands via improvements in network and wireless technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT) has played a key role in the disruption of the communication. These technologies continue to disrupt process and practices as capabilities are developed to support the demands.

The areas of focus and disruption change based on reactions to demands and imagination in delivery and capabilities. The LTL market, for instance is in the throws of a major disruption now based on shared ride technologies. This has flowed into freight forwarders and also customization demands to support inventory management for last mile deliveries. This is a great example of consumer demands driving the market to incorporate social technologies, in this case ride share technologies, into the business process to improve the practices. Another example of technologies and network capabilities impact on supply chain is the Iot tools and capabilities utilization to improve tracking and planning capabilities that has been a continuous improvement process for quite some time.

Blockchain tracking and tracing capabilities are incorporated to support demands of lot trace and date management for food products to provide historic product pedigree information accuracy. These capabilities were initially slow to acceptance and now the combination of market demands (read consumer demands), regulatory requirements to support recalls and improvements in technology and network capabilities are driving this to mainstream usage. Blockchain technologies already provide a great deal of benefits and while already delivered significant impact in the supply chain it is really still in its infancy and I expect the capabilities and usage to expand with new imaginative demand.

Retail disruption has combined with technologies to produce a discontinuous disruption in supply chain to support changing consumer demands. Disruptive forces have always been around and the big difference now is the speed of the disruption. This speed has been increased as a result of technology and network capabilities available to the consumer more than any other factor, the key factor to the discontinuous disruption is the embrace of technology by consumers. The technology, combined with the improvements and growth in networks allowed the consumer to drive change into the market. Then social networks and social network technology encouraged the spread of consumer and business use of the technology. Putting technology into the hands of consumers is driving the rate and size of disruptions.

The challenge for the market and the supply chain is the identification of important and key disruptions, in other words what disruption will have legs that allow the disruption to grow and expand in usage. Unfortunately, there is really no way to determine the winners and losers and so the supply chain must act on all. This is where social networks and collaboration really show their value. Social networks provide the means to sense the disruption and measure the speed of growth along with clarification of the disruption. Collaboration and collaborative development allow the supply chain to respond and react to the disruption.

Effective Inventory Mangement

Inventory management is one of the pillars of a successful retail business and especially critical in the highly competitive eCommerce marketplace. While this statement would seem to go without saying, in the real world, effective inventory management can be very to achieve because of all of the moving parts. Effective inventory management requires first a focus on the basics; attention to detail, strong process management and determination especially when supporting controls and investigations.

Effective inventory management requires execution of complex global inventory management strategies, along with collaboration across internal and external partners that all come together to support the inventory management processes and procedures that support the highly volatile business demands. A focus on inventory management and control is required to support the extended global supply chain that is now key to the retail marketplace.

Inventory management provides the foundation of tools, process and procedures required to succeed in the global retail marketplace. It may not be a flashy capability but it is a base requirement to support the flashy side of retail . Bad inventory decisions can kill an organization’s profitability and wreak havoc on the supply chain. Developing and implementing inventory management controls as part of a seamless global logistics program doesn't just happen overnight. The successful inventory management program will be based on the following building blocks:


Collaboration program across the entire extended supply chain


Logistics planning, forecasting and analysis accuracy through robust sales and operations planning


Cycle counts to eliminate physical inventory


Product count program based on velocity and product demand to ensure availability for high demand product (A, B, C velocity usage)


How often do you analyze the velocity?


Inventory turn management that includes continuous review:


How do you improve inventory turn?


How do kits and co-pack products impact inventory and inventory turn


Inventory stocking practices in a multi DC network


Advanced Analytics supporting forecasting and planning

Inventory planning and forecasting provides an important feature and support in an effective continuous improvement process guiding inventory management practices in the global market. The accuracy of the planning and forecasting are enhanced by the volume of data available from the extended supply chain partners and requires a robust set of tools to perform the analysis. This begins with a focus on implementing and maintaining the fundamentals of inventory management and controls including robust programs starting with manufacturing planning, through cycle count procedures to ensure accuracy through inventory performance analytics supporting forecasting and planning.

Technology adds value to the continuous improvement process by providing a framework that integrates the data available from the from planning and forecasting with the process execution data to improve the ability to sense and respond in a continuous manner. Technology has become an integral partner in these activities to provide the connectivity required for the extended supply chain partners create knowledge from the vast amounts of data that are available. A robust continuous improvement program allows the supply chain partners to sense and respond to the changing inventory control demands that are increasing in both velocity and impact on the supply chain success,





Technology and collaboration has reached the point now where inventory management and control can fully utilize and take advantage of the volume of data to increase the effectiveness of the continuous improvement procedures and data volume support should not be considered a limiting factor. Big data capabilities provide the opportunity for each of the partners in the extended supply chain to both share and utilize data that would not have been imagined even three years ago and by the same token the capabilities of three years from now will be light years ahead. The focus of the supply chain partners must be on starting the continuous inventory management process and to develop the collaborative processes and procedures that will encourage experimentation and improvements.

Omni Market Strategy

Two of the largest players in the retail marketplace are now in the process of rebuilding their strategies to form the retail market in the image that meets their vision and the two strategies are very different because of where these retailers came from in their growth and development. The origins are driving their strategies to allow them each to leverage their base and also to leverage their customer base practices and expectations. Amazon and Walmart are these two giants in the market and they each bring a very different perspective and direction to their actions and capability delivery. These differences in perspective bring different strengths to their practices and this really sets the tone and the direction based on where the consumers are coming from; whether an electronic focus that bleeds into the brick and mortar or the opposite.




You can see from the differences in strategies and focus that were driven by the base customers allowed these retailers to build their strategic capabilities and now they are each trying to re-imagine their omni market strategy incorporating these baseline strategies and capabilities. This is an extremely difficult challenge for both because it pushes them outside of their comfort zone. This is easy to see when viewing the sales and marketing strategies; they both purchased capabilities in their expansion target channel to help move them ahead and they both are now working to integrate these acquisitions into their omni market strategy. These challenges and reactions by these two leaders showcase the value of experimentation and the willingness to fail forward. They both show a great deal of courage in these reactions and their willingness to spend to experiment.




You can also very clearly see where each of these retailers started and their base comfort zone, whether brick and mortar or eCommerce, and each of these starting points are driving interesting interactions and focus based on each of their starting points. As I mentioned earlier, the most encouraging aspect of these results is the willingness and even the excitement to experiment. Each of these retailers realize the importance of their actions and each have truly embraced the value and concepts of this experimentation to develop the new retail model. Each of these retailers realize they are building the the future and they see the value to being first in the development and delivery of this future.




There is no substitute for this experimentation and each of these retailers has embraced the challenge. They both realize that this experimentation is pushing the boundaries forward in the only manner that can be successful, they must experiment to determine what works and what will be accepted by the consumer. They must experiment in this manner because the market is moving so fast and the forward movement will more than pay for the failures and will provide the lead to allow them to maintain a healthy lead on the competitive advantage. There are many other retailers attempting to focus on their omni market strategy and they are facing these challenges in historical manner where these retailers are taking the safe path of change, waiting on the changes to be a little more solidified. This shows the legacy culture that generally waits for the change to solidify. This culture though will fail this time because of the velocity and breadth of change in the market, the retailers that wait run a significant risk to waiting too long to change and then being too late for success.

Supporting Discontinuous Change

The current retail marketplace experience of discontinuous change causing disruption and in some cases extreme challenges to react should not be a surprise to anyone. In fact, I think the big surprise is the continued dependence of major retailers on historical reactions such as cutting costs to react to the market disruption. This type of marketplace disruption requires a new way of reacting and not just retrenching into more of the same tactics used during market downturns. We are not experiencing a downturn in the market, we are experience an overhaul of the market shopping and purchasing while the market is expanding. These are the most difficult conditions to address and requires investment in rebuilding the retailer business model.





The level of discontinuous change in the retail marketplace has disrupted this marketplace demanding of participants a transparent and cohesive shopping and purchasing experience. The waves of demands have not given the large legacy retailers much of a chance to catch up with the demands and the bad news is that these waves of demands and change will only increase in velocity and impact as they build on the previous changes. This requires a new paradigm from the retail marketplace of participants and partners to support both the level and velocity of the change.





This paradigm change requires a focus on increased and improved capabilities to sense change and, probably most important, a new increased focus on experimentation, especially in meeting change. What has become abundantly clear though is that this new paradigm requires a high level of collaboration across not only partners but consumers as well. This is requires as an integrated plan and partnerships to support not only the necessary activities and practices to sense change, it is also required to support the reaction to the change. Every single change and and especially change leading to disruption requires requires a coordinated response across a multitude of partner to react and support the demands.





In looking back and looking around I do not really see any marketplace disruption that required only one organization to drive, yes there was one leader that recognized the opportunity for change and market disruption, however, that leader then partnered with other participants to support and enable the disruption. The key issue that is see that absolutely must be overcome in order to survive is supporting a robust collaboration model and unfortunately this is the one issue that requires a culture change in the large legacy retailers to enact. In looking around I see many companies that speak about the importance of collaboration and are even taking steps to improve collaboration with their external partners, the issue that I see though is that many of the same larger legacy retailers are still hung up in internal silos that are slowing change through the controls to maintain these silos.





In order to truly support the discontinuous change and the market disruption that will only increase in velocity I believe that the market must create chief collaboration officer that is empowered to seek out and expand collaboration across internal silos while also seeking out and expanding collaboration across their market partners. This is a culture change that will require support of the organization leadership and the best way to broadcast the support and importance is through the creation of a chief collaboration officer that is empowered to make change. This chief collaboration officer will be charged with sensing and supporting the change and disruption in the marketplace and this officer will also be charged with the authority to experiment and the encouragement to fail.

Obsolescence In Disruption

A significant result of disruption is the obsolescence and the market disruption is no different. This means that the market partners must focus on both the change creating new features and functionality along with the retirement of obsolete services in their drive for change in order. This can be a very difficult process because it requires additional focus on the determination and then the retirement of the obsolete services and this can be almost as much work as the development of the new services and capabilities. The challenge for everyone is spending the time and effort on elimination of obsolete capabilities and services because this is not the exciting aspect of disruption and in general is rather thankless. This now requires a bit of cultural modification to focus on the importance of eliminating obsolete features and its role in supporting development of new features.




While it may be difficult to identify legacy features and functionality that has been made obsolete it is definitely not impossible and it is really important to eliminate obsolete features not only because it is no longer necessary but also because the obsolete features can also impact the functionality of new features. This may seem at odds with the concept of new features and functionality, however the obsolete features can get in the way of new features and even negate the feature or benefits unwittingly. In addition to the general housekeeping concept of cleaning up obsolete features there is also a need to eliminate unnecessary costs of license and support costs that will continue on until the feature is eliminated. There is no real easy way to identify and there is also, unfortunately, no standard process to eliminate the obsolete features. Each feature is unique and the challenge with the elimination is the integration of these features. The good news though is that there is an additional benefit to elimination of the obsolete features which is that obsolete features will also eliminate direct hard integration while the new features will deliver loosely coupled integration that simplifies the future obsolescence.




In addition to the effort required to identify and remove obsolete features there is a cultural aspect to this challenge. The culture of the organization must focus and encourage the elimination of obsolete features in the same manner as focus on new features. This is a critical aspect to the equation because of the speed of disruption there must be an equal focus on elimination of obsolete features to support the development of new features. We must realize that the acting of eliminating obsolete features is just as much a part of the market disruption as the development of new features. One way to modify the focus is the realization and the promotion of the benefits of eliminating obsolete features. One very important benefit of the elimination of obsolete features is that these obsolete features currently are more hard wired to the overall functionality and this increases the difficulty to change at the velocity the market demands.




Remember there are always two sides to a problem and change and these must be taken into account in order to meet the changing demands in the manner and velocity required. This requires a two pronged approach to delivery; change in culture to encourage and recognize the importance of eliminating obsolete features in addition to the focus on responding to changes in the marketplace.

Analytics Key to Disruption

The retail marketplace has developed a robust set of tools to support consumer purchase and delivery over the years providing a solid framework of tools and capabilities that can be combined in many ways to support consumer demands. Now it is important to focus the same kind of attention and effort to develop and support the tools that will allow the marketplace partners to sense the change and respond to the demands of the marketplace. In my opinion, analytics tools and data collection is the key to the ability to sense change and demands and as such provide the key to navigating and responding to the disruption that is rocking and will continue to rock the marketplace. Analytics is truly the next frontier and provides the key to addressing and reacting to the demands for change and interactions.




The disruption will continue and increase in velocity and the change will be focused on collaboration and integration of marketplace services with the consumer. A contributing factor to this integration and collaboration will be services and internet tools that are growing in numbers and capabilities to provide new consumer services and tools that will naturally require integration with omni market shopping and purchasing. These tools and services themselves while driving change into the market are also producing a huge amount of data that can be harvested for analytics by the smart marketplace partners. This is where the smart partners will focus because this data provides them with a goldmine of information and capabilities to sense and respond to the marketplace. This is why assistant software is so important to companies like Amazon, Google and Apple not only does the assistant engage and lock the consumer to the assistant, the assistant is also collecting data specific to the consumer for analytics.




We are now entering an age of analytics as a tool to navigate the velocity and force of disruption in the market. I think this is a bit of a chicken and egg question because I believe that as much as analytics enhances the understanding and the how to address the change, I also believe that the analytics is also driving change to new depths and capabilities because of the types of analytics and the data available and utilized in the analytics. In other words the analytics is actually creating new change and disruption because of the types and breadth of the analytics performed.




Analytics are not only the key to navigating and surviving disruption, the analytics practice and framework is also driving the disruption in ways that were not available just a few years ago. In addition the analytics of the future will also be dramatically different in a few years as well. Analytics is a practice that people will improve with use and addition of data, however, analytics is also much more than just a practice. Analytics is truly the key to disruption; not only sensing and responding to disrupting change but more importantly driving disrupting change into the market. This is truly a practice that must be started and invested in for the future and partners must start immediately so they are not left behind. The velocity of change and disruption will not allow time for waiting to settle, the settling of change is really the introduction of the next change and as a result there can be no waiting to follow the lead.

Market Disruption Framework

There is no way to avoid the disruption in the marketplace and this means that both retailers and partners must face the forces driving the disruption and meet the demands head on. The good news is that it is not necessary to meet all of the demands, however you must meet the demands focused on your market segment and product mix. This means that really all demands and changes must be evaluated to determine the impact to the particular market segment in order to identify what is required to in order to be successful. This task is overwhelming without the framework to provide an early warning system directed by a robust analytics capability. There is a robust disruption sense and respond framework that is required for participants in the marketplace that will allow them to sense the change based on the data analytics and then help to define the necessary response to the change.




This disruption framework truly comes down to a foundation of robust and flexible integration, analytics and communication platforms that supports a culture and focus on change and continuous improvement. The retailers and partners in the marketplace must focus on sensing and responding to the demands and market changes through the process of continuous improvements rather than any newly minted functionality or software. This is good news is that this will allow the partners to focus on the foundational framework required to support the changes so they can focus on responding to the changes rather than developing all new functionality for every change. The bad news is that there is no silver bullet to solve the demands as there were in during other times of disruption.




The current disruption activities in fact require a focus on culture and social networking rather than software, although to be fair software plays a very large role in identification of the market demands. The actual reaction to the change is based on the means that the partners either integrate new partners or put together existing functionality with a new integration or social communication connection. These changes are related to identification more than brand new functionality. Don’t get me wrong, there is some level of new functionality being introduced as a matter of improvements to efficiencies for instance such as robotics or new delivery capabilities, however the vast majority are changes in relationships and interactions between partners and existing functionality.




The most important ingredient to this equation is the analytics capabilities that are required to sense the change in the market in a timeframe that allows the most time for the partners in the market to react. This is the single tool that will provide the greatest impact to the abilities of the partners to adjust to the disruption market actions This must be a key foundational capability to the disruption framework. The analytics capabilities are key ingredient to the continuous improvement process and must be a key focus in order for the continuous improvement evaluation and direction process to be successful.

Velocity of Failure

The twin to the velocity of change is the velocity of failure and these two opposite actions are closely related and end up driving each other in increasing discontinuous cycles. These are increasingly related and a failure to meet the velocity of change will surely increase the velocity of failure but meeting the velocity of change can also increase failure as well. The challenge in meeting these demands is the knowledge of insight and direction of the change. The challenge to obtaining the knowledge is the data collection and analytics required to collect and develop the knowledge from the data. There is really no way around this challenge because the velocity and types of change will surely overrun any retailer that ignores the challenge. What we should have learned from Amazon is that change is iterative and very much a trial and error process and this must be embraced in order to succeed in change.




This is no time to wait for the change to be identified by the industry to react and implement the change. The level and also types of change will interact and react in ways that create all new changes and the only thing that really can be predicted is that the rate of change will only increase, bringing with it an increased velocity of failure. This can be extremely intimidating for large retailers because they are not generally equipped for high velocity change and this is not their general practice. They are just coming out of a long time practice of generally waiting for the change to stabilize before responding. This practice no longer works because of the velocity of change and this is a great example of how the velocity of change increases the velocity of failure.




In order to avoid, or at least respond and change to the changes that will drive failure retailers must not only become more nimble and open to executing change and they must become increase their knowledge of the factors driving change, they must focus on the factors that will allow them to sense and respond to change. The most important aspect is the improved ability to sense the changes and then the analytics to understand how to respond. The sense practice becomes the early warning of direction and types but the most important aspect is the analytics to understand how and when to respond. The velocity of change and most importantly, the velocity and volume of data available in the marketplace has dramatically increased the velocity of failure and as the volume of data increases both the velocity of change and failure increases. Retailers, and truly all partners in the marketplace, must focus on the data and the analytics in order to sense and respond appropriately to the change.




There is an even greater change that is disrupting the marketplace now; the change that is important today can be the failure of tomorrow. This is probably the greatest marketplace disruption factor. Amazon is probably the best example of the velocity of change and change experiments to understand the marketplace. Amazon is continuously implementing change as a means to experiment and better understand the market and also the potential. Google is another example from the technology and retail sector that has focused on experimentation to meet and create the marketplace. These practices should be mimicked by others to ensure their success and most importantly reaction and change to avert failure.

Supply Chain Multi Sourcing

The velocity of change is impacting all aspects of the marketplace from customer relationships to partner relationships to the manufacturing relationships and everything between. Retailers in the fashion industry seem to be the first to recognize and many of them have reacted to the changes to implement the fast fashion market segment. I find this as a great initial example of the results of the velocity of change in the marketplace and believe this will be the model for many of the aspects of the changes. The collaborative supply chain is providing the tools and the network to support the changes and the partners are expanding their experiments into all aspects of the collaborative network to improve their ability to meet the demands. The next step from a sourcing perspective is the expansion of the multi sourcing practice to develop manufacturing partners locally to meet spikes in demand and support end of life cycle demand to reduce overstock.




We have reached the point now in the retail marketplace where the specialty service providers are expanding in the services and even products they offer to support the specialty demands. This includes the local manufacturing of products in the marketplace. These collaborative practices in the extended supply chain along with the growth in capabilities of data analytics provide the tools now for retailers and manufacturers to improve planning and forecasting so demand to a point where the majority of retailers can improve their abilities to support the consumer demands. These capabilities now provide the framework for any retailer to utilize to their advantage.




There is no way to go back and the supply chain partners including manufacturers, transportation and retailers must accept and embrace the change. I see technology manufacturers embracing the global manufacturing and marketplace along with home products. These have all blazed the trail of this model and going forward the collaborative supply chain network will provide the support necessary to link and communicate in this global model. I envision this model to grow and expand as the market demands change and grow to require the global model to meet the demands. The multi sourcing model provides the framework to support the changing demands.




Just as the retail marketplace changed with the growth and expansion of the collaborative and social tools integration with the sales and shopping, these same tools and practices will expand into the sourcing and manufacturing realm to support the consumer demands more efficiently bringing with them a quickening and shortening of the product life cycle. The result of the collaborative supply chain growth and expansion will spread through the forecasting, planning and manufacturing practices in the supply chain. As this multi sourcing model expands the through the collaborative marketplace the results will change the way that consumer demands are met, increasing the flexibility to meet the spikes more efficiently to increase sales and opportunities.

Visibility Across The Supply Chain

The need, and demands, for visibility across the supply chain has always been a key focus in the extended supply chain network and to this end, the extended supply chain network has always been focused on using technology to achieve results.  The extended supply chain recognized early on that technology must be utilized to meet their objectives and moreover, have always been open to the investments in technology to meet these needs. The extended supply chain partners have recognized and achieved dramatic benefits through the use of investments in technology.  The Internet of Things is the most recent wave of technology investments for the extended supply chain partners and these tools combined with the growth and improvements in data collection and data analytics is fueling the next wave of improved and extended visibility across the extended supply chain.

The supply chain extended partners have shown over and over again an ability to incorporate technology and network capabilities to increase the visibility across the supply chain to help improve services and capabilities and each time these efforts have provided a great return on investment.  Now with the increase of collaboration and the even greater extension of the supply chain reach there is even more opportunity to leverage technology through enhanced collaborative practices. The key now to the efforts is the collaborative capabilities through the network. The growth of consumer interaction and demands on the market through their embrace of similar collaborative technologies is now pushing the edges of supply chain visibility even further.

Every partner in the extended supply chain including the end customer of the supply chain is now demanding increased visibility and capabilities to optimize and even adjust within the supply chain.  You see the results of this especially within the retail supply chain where the end consumer is interacting directly with not only the carriers to coordinate the last mile delivery but also interacting directly from the manufacturer to the end retailer in shopping and purchasing.  The enhanced visibility supports the endless aisles concept beautifully and efficiently and these capabilities have moved the baseline even higher.

The visibility drive is enhanced from the improved data analytics and the tools incorporated by the supply chain to track and manage the processes through the supply chain provide a treasure trove of data to be used to increase the visibility and tracking through the supply chain.  The data is the driving factor of the visibility across the supply chain. The technology improvements in networks and wireless capabilities allow the tracking and visibility of each individual delivery and shipment and container from cradle to grave. This capability is truly available now and in some industries has been incorporated and other industries have already started moving in this direction.

Enhanced visibility in the supply chain is a reality and the visibility is driven by the demands of all partners across the extended supply chain that is fueled by improved data analytics and expansion of the Internet of Things technology to capture data from additional outlets.  To put it into a consumer perspective, the days are limited where consumers will sit at home waiting on a morning or afternoon appointment. The number of partners that provide specific time and tracking of deliveries and repair trucks is increasing every day. This is only a surface example of the types of capabilities available and the extended supply chain is continuously pushing the limit to increase efficiencies and eliminate issues.  The increased visibility becomes now a key tool in the validation process of the continuous improvement process.

Innovation Cycle In Supply Chain

We have entered into a time of discontinuous disruption that is being driven by innovation demands in the supply chain. This disruption is spawned by recent innovations driving new demands that are in turn driven in large part by the technology improvements and capabilities. These demands have create an innovation cycle in the supply chain that has produced amazing results and produced a framework through data analytics and artificial intelligence to support the discontinuous disruption cycles through the innovation cycle responses resulting from the analytics and artificial intelligence innovations. In the future this will become the expected norm in the supply chain and will require increasing innovation in analytics and artificial technology delivered through a highly collaborative extended supply chain network to meet the disruption.




The question comes now of how to continue to meet the innovation demands in the supply chain in order to react and meet the disruption that is driven clearly by technology and customer demands. I am referring in this case to customer / partner demands in the extended supply chain, in other words, everyone in the supply chain is feeling the pressure from demands of their customer / partners and every partners is demanding innovation to meet the disruption in their process and procedures from these demands. In the extended supply chain demands and disruption can only be met with collaboration and innovation. The extended supply chain has been building the network and the collaborative partnerships especially over the recent years to give them the foundational tools in collaboration to meet the disruption in an efficient and robust manner.




This is now where all the efforts to build a robust collaborative network to provide the framework and foundation for partner integration comes into play to provide the basis to support the types of innovation required to support the demands. This network provides the ability for partners across the supply chain to plug in to provide goods and services to support the innovation demands. This is really where the value comes from the collaborative network. Innovation cannot be delivered in this environment without a robust collaborative network that can adjust and support the demands. As an example, the collaborative network provides the framework for pop-up point solution providers to jump in to quickly and efficiently support changing demands thereby eliminating the requirement for the service to be developed internally by a partner. This method of collaborative delivery is much more efficient than any previous model for supporting changing demands and discontinuous disruption.




The final piece of the puzzle necessary to support the innovation cycle in the supply chain is the control tower framework that supports efficient integration and collection of data that is necessary to support the data analytics and the artificial intelligence demands that are driving the successful response to the supply chain demands. Everything runs on data today and without a robust control tower framework to manage the efficient collection and integration of data the supply chain would quickly be overwhelmed with the changing demands. The control tower provides the means for the analysis and reaction to changes in the most efficient manner.