Artificial Intelligence Improving Logistics

Over the last few years there has been a great deal of interest and development in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential to improve the supply chain and logistics.  There is an immense amount of data available across the supply chain from a combination of Internet of Things (IoT) devices connected directly to supply chain partners and the partners across the supply chain network.  In addition to the data produced internally in the organization supply chain actions, there is now an immense amount of data available from external customers to the supply chain network partners via direct interaction within the supply chain network through partner portals and direct interactions  integration points with supply chain external customers.  The Internet and online interactions from eCommerce (B2B and B2C) provide this data.  Supply chain partners would be foolish not to use this data to improve their logistics capabilities.

 

The challenge for the supply chain network has been two fold;

-        How to utilize the data

-        What data to collect for both analysis and use 

 

Artificial intelligence starts with the collection of data for analysis and this is an important starting point.  There is no way early on in the collection of data to determine what will be important.  This is because the analysis must be performed first to understand the potential use and value of the collected data.  The intelligence part of the analysis also requires a great deal of information in order to validate the hypothesis and then to determine direction based on this intelligence.  Starting with the data you can see why it is so important to collect everything because the intelligence part of the equation will generally require additional data from the same periods to confirm and validate direction. 

 

It is important to collect all data then because you cannot tell what may be important for the analysis when determining direction.  The good news here though is that storage is cheap and the technology to analyze vast amounts of data has been improved through game-changing improvements in technology.  These two points have probably done more for the growth and development of artificial intelligence than any other developments over the last few years.  These improvements in technology allow the supply chain to refine and redirect logistics activities and practices based on facts and data rather than hunches and hopes.  Combine these two technologies with the growth of the Internet of Things capabilities and technologies and the potential for improvements is almost overwhelming.

 

These capabilities bring improvements and opportunities in automation including warehouse location and slotting, drones and robotics to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. These are not the only areas of improvement to the achieved through artificial intelligence.  There will be improvements in volumes, inbound and outbound forecasts for instance, that will bring dramatic change to the supply chain as manufacturers and transportation providers revise their processes to incorporate the analytics into their plans and procedures.  The warehouse operation though will also be dramatically impacted as artificial intelligence brings analytics to the equation that allows the operation to understand and immediately adjust labor forecasts to changes in the operation during the date based on near real time events.  Artificial intelligence is just another force bringing transformation to the supply chain and the supply chain must start with a baseline of continuous improvements in the flexibility and continuous change practices in order to meet the transformations.

 

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.

Solution Is A Stop In The Strategic Journey

A solution is merely an interim stop or milestone in the journey that is your business strategy. Your strategy is your map that guides your way and methods of taking your journey, just like setting up a destination Google Maps with interim stops along the way. Your strategy must be capable of sensing changes and disruption early to be able to respond and most importantly to evaluate your interim deliverables, or solutions, required to meet your long term strategy. Perhaps most importantly, these adjustments in response to disruption allow you to evaluate your strategy to improve, update, improve and focus over time. The ability of your business and market strategy to sense and respond to disruption must also improve over time in order to survive. This, in essence, is a basic tenant of the continuous improvement process and this continuous process makes up the foundational framework to sense and respond to business, market and environmental disruption.

Supply chain network digitization has become a key factor in supply chain resilience with the need driven in large part by VUCA resulting in waves of disruption across markets. The number of companies seeking approaches to measure and benchmark their digital infrastructure and processes is growing as a result. In order to achieve the improvements necessary to support the demand it is important to incorporate tools that can assess, and perhaps most importantly, monitor the benefits and challenges resulting from the digitization process itself.

This is where real time federated networks and control tower capabilities come into play to provide the capabilities necessary to sense the disruption in time to respond to the issue and even recover in time to limit or even eliminate disruptive results. What we are seeing now is the impact from disruption causing additional waves of disruption that in turn impact the supply chain and dependent businesses. This does not need to be the case and should be a critical focus and objective to the supply chain strategy.

We are seeing now a realization of the continuous impact to the market as a result of the state of extreme VUCA we are experiencing. This is difficult to react and address because, frankly, if feels as if the market is in an almost continuous state of disruption. This requires a collaborative technology that brings together the extended partners across the supply chain on a foundation of a federated network that provides the means to collect and analyze the data generated across the supply chain in forecasting the disruption and then providing suggestions for reactions to the disruption. This is complicated by the volume of data available and necessary to analyze and forecast results and the speed of data generation from each of these data points

Control tower technology combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence combine to help to address the challenge. The technology is in a state now that can quickly and efficiently sense and respond to disruption by utilizing the large volumes of digital data through machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to analyze and identify the disruption along with potential reactions and responses to the disruption. We have entered into a time now where large volumes of data that is collected and available for analysis can actually be processed in a manner and timeframe that allows the supply chain to respond. This is the power of control towers and this next logical step in the strategic journey to the benefits that can be achieved through a robust digitalization strategy.


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

Supply Chain Network Resilience

 

Supply Chain Network Resilience

 

Supply chain network digitization has become a  key factor in supply chain resilience with the need driven in large part by VUCA resulting in waves of disruption across markets.   The number of companies seeking approaches to measure and benchmark their digital infrastructure and processes is growing as a result. In order to achieve the improvements necessary to support the demand it is important to incorporate tools that can assess, and perhaps most importantly, monitor the benefits and challenges resulting from the digitization process itself.  This is another variation on a continuous improvement program and requires the same methods and practices to achieve the digitization objectives and benefits.  It is important to review and validate modifications because of the relationships between multiple digitization initiatives and their combined benefits and challenges.  

Kearney’s Resilience Stress Test “Strategic Options To Build Resilience”, assesses supply chain resilience outside of the common disaster scenario capability and capacity planning to be able to rapidly flex, or repurpose, assets, across your extended supply chain network to be able to respond to unanticipated supply shocks, such as trade wars, major weather events, or permanent shifts in demand.  The dimensions of this stress test framework include: geography; planning; suppliers; inbound transportation; manufacturing; outbound distribution; product portfolio and platform; and financial/working capital.

In order to be successful the framework monitoring must be spread widely across all supply network points, and processes, as well as those of suppliers and partners, initially starting with critical processes and partners, with a focus on measuring the degree of digitalization and capabilities in each of these factors. These digitization capabilities and processes include using IoT sensors in logistics or fulfilment operations, robotic process automation in production or distribution, and analytics and machine learning in production centers, inventory management, and financial capital management.  As a starting point, the initial evaluation provides the baseline that should be used to monitor and measure progress and must be developed to support monitoring across your extended supply network.

This is where automated control tower software can and should be utilized to support a process that will continuously monitor the network.  Ideally, this control tower solution would be capable of alerts and even prescribe how to resolve issues as well as actually resolving issues automatically as they occur.  The challenge in the extended supply chain network is caused by the velocity of disruption experienced across your network.  These disruptions can occur with such speed and spread across your network partners that it becomes impossible to perform the necessary analysis and adjustments to react and address the disruption in a timely manner.  It is not enough to identify after the fact because of the potential damage to your business.  The velocity of the disruption and the potential impact requires immediate response and this can be achieved by a robust software solution that spans the supply chain network.

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.

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 Starts With You and I

 

Digital transformation starts with your own personal commitment to digitize your personal and professional data to eliminate paper. This is important first to show your commitment to ‘walk-the-walk’ and second to help you to experience both the benefits and challenges from the digital transformation. I have personally committed to digital transformation for all of the reasons expressed for your business and market transformation, however the key reason for me is the ease of maintaining my personal records.  The first time that you quickly find an electronic receipt or a reference to a business question that was discussed in a meeting a month ago will turn you into a convert! 

Look at one example; the My Lowes customer account.  This is not a typical rewards card, or account,  because you do not receive discounts or accumulate points for rewards.  What it does provide though is a digital record of all your purchases and most importantly purchase details for future ease of reference.  A couple of examples of the benefits I've realized are elimination for a need to maintain receipts for returns and ability to purchase the same paint tint for a repair after I've disposed of any physical record and the most valuable example for me is the ability to return products without receipt.  Don’t get me wrong, rewards are an important feature of store loyalty programs, I think that these features provided by the Lowe’s program provide a pretty compelling encouragement to join.

A major challenge to any digital transformation initiative is the start-up effort to build out the framework and foundation of infrastructure to support the transformation.  Any transformation is difficult and the initial start-up must provide a reason and incentive to commit to starting the journey.  Digital transformation, whether personal or professional, is no different and requires the commitment to work through the initial challenges in order to benefit from the improved capabilities.  A personal commitment to digital transformation provides the basis and background for you to evangelize a professional business transformation.   

Fortunately for this movement, the tools currently available, along with the personal experience and acceptance of the digital age delivered by personal computing tools make the commitment a little more palatable.  This is a good thing for business digital transformation because it encourages people to question ‘why not’ and push for business digital transformation.  Every major successful transformation in my memory was driven in large part by the consumer interest and pushing business to change.  It really comes down to expanding and providing the average consumer the encouragement and incentive to embrace the change, once this initial hurdle is overcome the next step is business transformation.

We are at a crossroad now in the digital transformation journey.  Consumers are now embracing the tools and technology provided for personal use and opportunity.  I know that my own personal use of these new tools has dramatically increased as new capabilities have increased to the point where I too am pushing to extend transformation in my business activities.  The pandemic lock-down has also added to my push as I increased digital and video interactions in my work. 

The decision and action points are all converging into an increasing wave of disruption in the market.  The opportunity now is for us in business to embrace and encourage the embrace of these capabilities.  It is important now to review and revise your business strategy to support and implement a resilient and flexible framework that can respond quickly to the changes.  Do not make the mistake in thinking that you have time to respond to these changes!

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.

Partner To Develop Digital Enablement Strategy

 

 

The COVID-19 pandemic disruption created an urgency in reacting and redefining the global supply chain in reaction to the consumer market upheaval. The initial pandemic disruption set off waves of related disruptions in such a short period of time that companies and organizations are overwhelmed because they cannot wait until the dust settles to address the next event. We have truly entered into a time of severe VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) across the marketplace and the supply chain is in the eye of this storm providing the key capabilities to respond. Now, perhaps more than ever, the response depends on partnerships across the extended supply chain to effectively sense and respond to the disruptions.

We must now assume that the cycles of disruption have reached a point where this time of severe VUCA will be the norm for the foreseeable future. As such, we must develop a strategy and the capabilities that help partner organizations in the extended supply chain to sense the disruption early and respond to the disruption quickly and effectively in a manner that can be leveraged for the response to the next wave of disruption. These demands require expertise in the broad market along with deep specific expertise of partners to first navigate the events and then develop a strategy to utilize the network capabilities to respond. Quick response requirements do not allow for delay hoping the disruption will disappear. We should have learned by now that it requires a response that is based on a market impact and expertise in quick identification of an appropriate response.

This is where technology and specifically a robust digital enablement / transformation strategy comes into play. The velocity of the market coupled with disrupting forces make it almost impossible for humans to sense the disruption in time to respond and limit the impact and prepare for the potential next disruption. Technology that senses the changes in the market and then identifies potential results and impact is critical to the success of a business. Considering the extended supply chain as an example, there is just too many moving parts and participants in the equation for any one partner to hope to identify and implement a response. Success requires developing a partner network to be able to respond to the waves of disruption effectively. Further success requires developing a market partner strategy that informs and enables each individual partner strategy.

This new model requires a strategy that is at once flexible and also embraces extended partnerships to enable the response to disruption in a way that supports the business strategy. Organizations must partner with an expert(s) to help develop this strategy in order to meet the time constraints. You cannot wait for the current VUCA environment to settle and return to business as usual. We need to accept the fact now that business as usual is a VUCA state that requires organizations and partners to ‘walk and chew gum at the same time’. This requires the input and direction from an expert with the vision and the experience and perhaps most importantly the network of partners and contacts that can help in developing this strategy.



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.

Digital Enablement

  

We have reached a tipping point in the market relating to digital enablement and transformation that is fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery efforts. This has been a long time coming and the market was moving in this direction very slowly prior to the pandemic, in large part I believe because of market infrastructure (especially brick and mortar real estate), retailer culture (waiting for widespread acceptance to work out the bugs) and the consumers using shopping as a physical social exercise engaged in malls. Consumers quickly recognized and embraced the benefits of digital enablement in large part as a result of the necessity to adjust to the pandemic and these same consumers are now dragging retailers and the market to deliver on digital enablement.

The market is currently fragmented in both priority and direction of this enablement while at the same time struggling to react and recover from the pandemic. This disruption has produced a multi-prong disruption that has been extremely difficult for some retailers to react to and their reactions to these disruptions in many ways are spawning new disruptions. These disruptions are driven by the legacy retail market culture that has never really reconciled their practices with the increasing consumer embrace of digital enablement and the resulting market demands. In the past, large retailers have been very hesitant of the ‘bleeding edge’ technology and practices. This ingrained culture of the legacy retail leadership has now impeded their ability to respond effectively and efficiently to the mounting demands of the pandemic recovery, consumer demands and most importantly the resulting disruption and re-making of the retail market.

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 process. 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. Retailers must now take a multi-prong approach to their digital enablement activities in order to react to the multi-prong market disruptions. They must focus on a strategy that first defines and then delivers the digital enablement while also focusing on immediate responses 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.

There are tools that can be utilized to support the digital enablement and transition strategy that support the necessary transition from legacy retail applications and processes. This is where retailers should focus first and foremost on defining the objectives and deliverables. The next step then requires defining the ‘how’ to deliver the objectives and deliverables. The tools should be incorporated to support the two pronged delivery to enable the transition to the new objectives and requirements while also responding to the continuous disruptions that are buffeting the market.

One tool in particular can and should be utilized to support these transition efforts to digital enablement This tool can also help in responding to the significant disruption and unanticipated impact and reaction still occurring in reaction to the pandemic. I believe a key to digital enablement and disruption response is a robust RPA tool that supports automation of test data and test execution. It is very common to hear testing horror stories regarding costs, labor and schedule requirements in the range of 40% of the implementation. These challenges are a huge impediment to the ability to respond and recover from disruptions and critical business improvements concurrently. RPA can deliver dramatic testing automation improvements in both data generation and test scenario execution that will reduce time and effort to deliver.

RPA is by no means a ‘silver bullet’ solution to your business demands. RPA does however provide a significant tool that can enhance and enable current process improvements and optimization as a first step to your digital enablement strategy. The first step now is to develop your RPA strategy based on demands and opportunities - this will guide you through your second step which is tool implementation. One more important point to take into account, is the benefits of working with an experienced partner to help and guide you in your strategy development and tool selection process to quickly recover costs.

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.

Disruption Without Interuption

  

Disruption Without Interruption should be the mantra for all business strategies because it describes perfectly the objective for all strategies. What we are seeing in the business world is a period of continuous waves of disruption that I believe have been triggered by the COVID-19 recovery demands and requirements. The world is not slowing down and disruption begets disruption which then begets more disruption. While the tipping point may have been the COVID-19 pandemic, the difficulty in responding has been related to the waves of disruption triggered by continually developing events and even disasters. These are not black swan events, instead we seem to have entered into a black swan time period or era.

Based on the above, I believe the business response must focus on a strategy that is informed and guided by a robust Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program. This strategy and program is based on a solid foundational process of continuous improvement practices that have been proven and reinforced over time that incorporates a robust risk management process. It is important to develop a program to manage and maintain the strategy through quickly changing demands and new disruptions that is both flexible and focused on moving forward. This can only be done by understanding the demands and cause and impact of the current disruption and most importantly the potential for pending future disruption. This Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program is the foundation that supports your business success through these turbulent times.

Dirruptions and competition are probably two of the key influencers for every business. The interesting thing is that competitors and market competition plays the greater role in business strategy. Looking back over the last nine months shows that disruptions in business, whether supply, demand, or the ability to recover from disruption through an efficient supply chain produced a tremendous impact on business, the market and consumers. It is very clear that a Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program is an extremely important, if not critical, aspect to any business continuity planning. What's more, it is also very clear that the cycle of disruption is quickening rather than slowing and the importance of these capabilities is critical to the survival of any business in this environment. I also believe that the importance of taking the long term view and developing a plan and process for sensing and then responding to these disruptions is also of the highest importance especially to the long term success of the business.

In order to manage disruption and implement, and most importantly maintain, Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program and strategy it is important to focus. Focus is required for all strategic initiatives and the challenge is overcoming the day-to-day interruptions, disruptions and challenges that seem to continually interrupt your focus and energy. The challenge it seems is to define a process or incorporate tools that allow you to reduce the need to focus on these interruptions and the perfect tool for this challenge is robotic process automation.

There are many tools, expertise and capabilities available now that can help in developing a robust Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program to help your business, and the market, to react to disruptions and eliminate or reduce the resulting interruption and impact. Artificial Intelligence and Automation, such as process automation and RPA, are important tools to first sense and then respond to disruption. Other factors in developing a robust program frankly is imagination and consistency in applying imagination. This practice is produced through a commitment and encouragement from leadership that would come from elevating the role to a 'C' level responsibility. I also think audit controls and procedures must be modified to place increased importance on a Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program to limit the impact of the business.

RPA would allow the monitoring and even automated response to many of the daily interruptions and challenges and this would allow leadership to maintain a greater focus on the higher value objectives of your Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program. In addition benefits this demonstrates:

1. Commitment to RPA by implementing daily leadership tasks
2. First hand leadership experience demonstrating RPA allows automation of routine tasks to allow focus on value add tasks
3. Roles change to focus on higher value activities rather than job elimination

This ability to automate the routine to allow focus on high value activities 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 senior leadership implementation. 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.

The challenge to the program is complacency! Business must fight complacency and the tendency to slowly allow these types of programs to whither.


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.

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.

Counter Disruption In Supply Chain With Strategic Collaboration

The rate and also the impact of disruption is increasing in all ways.  It seems this year has been a watershed event from a disruption perspective and the current waves of disruption are continuing with new disruptions created as response to the previous disruptions.  This is an important factor in developing a response to disruption; you must continuously evaluate, develop and respond in order to survive.  This is not, and cannot be, viewed as a stand alone effort because the disruption is across the market.  This requires a collaborative approach from the market as well and this requires strong partnerships across the network.  You cannot hope to successfully react and respond to every disruption that comes along and you cannot hope to successfully sense every disruption in time to develop a successful response.

I suggest the solution is to incorporate your collaborative partners in a type of ‘disruption games’ strategic exercise that brings you together to review scenarios and market conditions in a collaborative manner to identify and deliver a strategic response that supports the partners and the market. This is a major factor in the review and update of your supply chain strategy.   It seems to me that a key challenge that hinders the success of the strategic response is that when you only view your internal impact and response you do not necessarily see the market level impact of the disruption and then the individual response to the disruption.  As we have seen highlighted to the ‘Nth’ degree this year a disruption can create new disruption based on the response, and most importantly, a potential disruption can be eliminated more effectively if the disruption is identified early and the response is collaborative across the market.

This highlights the importance of a strategic collaborative practice that brings your extended supply chain together to share risk and develop cohesive market strategic responses that most effectively respond to the disruption.  This builds on the current business continuity practice to discuss and plan for market continuity.  As a result of market globalization and the number and type of partners in the supply chain required to support this global market, it is no longer enough to develop a business continuity plan.  We must collaborate across our extended supply chain partners to develop a market continuity plan that takes into account the business risks identified by each partner.  The outcome of this market continuity plan is a cohesive response plan that improves the ability of the supply chain to sense disruption early and then respond in a cohesive and collaborative market based approach.

This collaborative market approach will reduce the risk of unintended disruption and further impact across the supply chain because the market continuity plan already takes into account the potential impact across the extended partners and then provides the strategy and plan to react to the disruption to limit the impact across the market.  I strongly believe there is no other way to succeed in this global market during the extreme disruptions we are experiencing.   

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