The overlooked supply chain barrier
Roberto Michel, editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 6/1/2003 6:00:00 AM
When consulting firm Accenture and Stanford's Business School put on their sixth annual supply chain management forum back in February, they surveyed the corporate executives in attendance about their views on barriers to supply chain improvement. Their responses shed light on what is an overlooked aspect of supply chain management.
As might be expected, integration is seen as a major obstacle. Just under 25 percent of those surveyed view a lack of systems integration as a significant obstacle to optimizing the performance of the extended supply chain. But when asked about the greatest internal challenge to this optimization, 43.5 percent cited "a lack of core supply chain management knowledge and skills" as the biggest impediment. The respondents felt even more strongly about the lack of supply chain knowledge among their trading partners.
The take-away is that successful supply chains rely on people, not simply technology or even a carefully instituted set of business practices. "Many of our clients have put extensive training programs in place to sustain their supply chain initiatives, and extend the skill sets within their organizations," says Narendra Mulani, an Accenture partner.
There are many ways to obtain supply chain education. Accenture, for one, offers a supply chain "academy" with an extensive array of online course offerings. Mulani says courses vary from those aimed at executive issues, to more tactical disciplines such as demand and supply planning.
This time of year is a great opportunity to take advantage of education. User conferences put on by enterprise software vendors are one of the best ways to gain hands-on training on how to improve specific supply chain management systems. While several major enterprise and supply chain suite vendors have already held user conferences, these events occur throughout the year—especially early summer and fall.
APICS is one of the best organizations to turn to for supply chain education. Its annual conference will be held Oct. 6-9 in Las Vegas. Other notable organizations that can help manufacturing managers expand their supply chain knowledge include The Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) International, and The Supply Chain Council. Check out our June supplement to learn more about the issues that MESA is addressing.
As we all know—but tend to forget in the midst of day-to-day execution—a lack of education poses a barrier to better systems and practices. As Mulani puts it, "If you don't focus on education, and on implementing the right operating model, all the technology in the world isn't going to solve your problems."
