I am continually amazed when I talk to supply chain executives about how unsuccessful they have been with the billions they have collectively spent on managing their supply chains. There is almost an inverse correlation between the amount spent on supply chain solutions and the relative satisfaction with that investment: The more a company spends fixing its supply chain, the less successful that effort seems to be.
The poster child of this big investment/low satisfaction dichotomy is probably Boeing and its troubled Dreamliner jet, but that’s just one of many examples. Conversation after conversation reveals costly projects and widespread dissatisfaction with the results. It doesn’t matter what industry or which products are in question: The state-of-the-art in supply chain management is characterized by a serious gap between expectations and results.
Part of the problem is in expectations. Again, we look to the Dreamliner. As MA’s Stephanie Neil wrote in the Edge blog at www.managingautomation.com in July, the Dreamliner project required “new technology, new business processes, and a completely new culture.” Was there anything Boeing wasn’t trying to change? Neil sums up the problem: “That’s a lot to take on along with the responsibility of a brand new product.”
Many supply chain projects engender such massive shifts — dislocations, really — that they are doomed to fail, not because of the software’s complexity, but because of people’s frailty. SCM is one of those categories that has evolved to the point where using the software the way the vendor intended too often exceeds manufacturers’ organizational capabilities. In short, big SCM is too complex for mere mortals to use efficiently.