Propel Your Supply Chain Design Maturity

A framework for developing a center of excellence that delivers value across your business

Learn what you need to develop a mature supply chain design organization that can drive value across the entire business.

The right people, processes, technology, and strategy make all the difference.

Set your supply chain organization up for success

More and more companies recognize they need a flexible and resilient supply chain to keep pace in today’s environment of fast changes and uncertainty. In this context, supply chain design is now a must-have capability. But many struggle with setting up a supply chain design competency that can grow with their business, navigate disruption, and deliver recurring value to the business.

Market-leading organizations have learned the value of developing a supply chain design center of excellence (COE) that centers on continuous design, reduces risk, improves resilience, and turns supply chain challenges into a competitive advantage.

The Supply Chain Design Maturity E-book

This in-depth e-book details the elements organizations should focus on to help their supply chain design COE fulfill its full potential and become the powerhouse of their business.

If you have started to build out your supply chain design COE but keep hitting roadblocks in your growth and maturity, this is for you.

Download now to discover:

Risk factors that threaten an organization’s success
8 drivers of supply chain design maturity
Factors to consider when structuring your supply chain design COE
What successful supply chain design COEs have in common

FAQ

Why is it more important than ever to focus on enhancing supply chain maturity?

Today’s supply chains are facing pressures and complexities more so than ever before. Organizations are now dealing with everything from supply shortages, unreliable lead times, labor shortages, capacity constraints, and unpredictable consumer behaviors. And inflation and tightening monetary policies have become especially concerning in the last year. On top of all this, the pace of change is only accelerating. As labor and material shortages still linger from the pandemic, rapid shifts in some industries are disrupting everything from materials to manufacturing and distribution. Meanwhile, changing consumer expectations around rapid fulfillment means everything needs to move faster.

This is all happening at a time when growing regulations and compliance requirements are also pressuring supply chains. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act has several environmental justice components that address diesel and port emissions. And in Europe, new legislation designed to reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050 will profoundly impact every industry, including shipping, transportation, and cross-border commerce.

60% of supply chain executives say their supply chains are designed for cost-efficiency, not resilience 87% plan to invest in supply chain resiliency in the next two years.

We are now in an environment where supply chains must be more flexible, efficient, and agile. Organizations can no longer plan on long-held assumptions and must put supply chain design at the forefront to adapt to these challenges.

Supply chain design is now a must-have capability to keep up with the pace of change and to sustain a competitive advantage. But developing a Supply Chain Design competency is a task that goes beyond being able to run a network optimization project. Developing a sustainable supply chain design competency has to do with setting up an organization, a path to drive speed to value, to be able to deliver recurring value for the business, and a way to track this value through time. Building such a competency involves the emergence of four key pillars: people, process, technology, and strategy. And developing each pillar is vital to the success of the endeavor as
a whole.

Market-leading organizations have embraced this and have created centers of excellence (COEs), putting in place integrated supply chain design practices centered on continuous design; reducing risk, improving resilience, and turning supply chain challenges into a competitive advantage.

What are some common characteristics and risk factors that can threaten sustainability in a supply chain design practice?

If supply chain design within an organization represents a part-time function with an ad hoc approach, this is a first characteristic of a company at risk for supply chain disruption. Secondly, a company is at risk if their supply chain design team is untrained on technology, and they lack knowledge to fully leverage capabilities. Furthermore, if a company lacks good supply chain employee retention and attraction strategies, their supply chain stability is at greater risk. Supply chain design lacks executive sponsorship. A fourth reason for risk to supply chains is that an organization is not educated on supply chain design capability or value proposition. Fifth and sixth, risks are more likely when the business/subject matter experts are not part
of the process (including projects and overall governance), and if identified opportunities to improve supply chains do not get implemented. A seventh potential area of risk exists when the implementation of supply chain improvements are not tracked or measured for success. Finally, if data collection is difficult and time-consuming, or if the supply chain data quality is inconsistent or laden with assumptions, supply chain disruptions will become a greater threat to your organization.

What are some characteristics of organizations with mature supply chain design?

Supply chain design involves the broader enterprise and potentially external partners
Engages with colleagues and subject matter experts across organization to determine challenges and incorporate input to drive outcomes
Broader participation and democratized decision support

Please download the eBook for more details.