Happy Thanksgiving week! To spread some holiday cheer, at the end of this note there’s a special “Thanksgiving recipe” from my grandson.
In the past five years, I’ve been sharing a presentation with almost five thousand C-Level supply chain executives called: “Is your supply chain an asset or a liability?”
There’s an audience participation part of the presentation that highlights a trend you might find stunning.
First, when I ask the audience members to stand up if their supply chain is really important to the success of their business, everyone stands up. I tell them they can remain standing if they are really honest about how important their supply chains are to the success of their business. Once again, everyone stays standing.
While they are standing, I ask them to use our supply chain spectrum to “grade” their supply chains on a 1-5 scale, where a “one” is awful and a “five” is world class. Stunningly, less than of 10% the audience typically remains standing when I tell them to sit unless they graded their supply chain a “3” or higher.”
How could that be? Everyone in the audience said their supply chains were important but less than 10% acknowledged that their supply chains were better than average.
Where do you rank your supply chain? Is it an asset or a liability?
We’re going to be addressing this topic in a new webinar on December 10 at 11am Central. We have a panel with decades of experience in different areas and encourage you to invite others who could benefit. This could be a great opportunity to get a team together and revisit your priorities before the beginning of a new year.
While companies are struggling with serious supply chain challenges and might find a functional supply chain acceptable, we’ve seen companies like Walmart and Amazon use their “above-average” supply chains to dominate the market. In fact, in 2022 when I interviewed Jeff Wilke, one of the top executives at Amazon before his retirement, I learned that Amazon viewed their supply chain as an asset that could be used to beat their competitors.
Is your supply chain helping or hurting your company? As I’ve emphasized before, it might be ok to have a mediocre supply chain if your competitors do. Rather than watching and waiting to see who will get ahead, we encourage you to look for improvements now.
If you’re looking for help, we encourage you to contact us about our Supply Chain Assessment. We have experience bringing together groups from across an organization to evaluate how the supply chain impacts their areas and to build an integrated supply chain improvement roadmap. Instead of a siloed approach why not have a holistic approach, and identify the investments needed for that to occur?
If you’re interested in learning more about that assessment and beginning the journey to a better supply chain, just send us an email, give us a call, or schedule a time to meet with Calendly.
Thanksgiving Recipe from a Grandson
Recently I was at my grandson’s holiday party and they handed out a cookbook where kids gave advice for cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
The advice from my grandson is to “skip cooking a turkey and go to grandma’s house where a turkey will already be cooking. Just cool it off and eat!” He wisely wrote that it’s important to help with cleaning after the meal. And don’t forget to check the freezer to get an ice cream sandwich or an orange Italian ice or sour popsicles.
Whatever your way is to celebrate, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!
