Becoming a Supply Chain Leader
Mastering and Executing the Fundamentals

Book Description

The book explains how to emerge and grow as a supply chain leader and details supply chain and procurement processes and operational activities in real-work scenarios across multiple supply chain verticals. The book defines what an entry level supply chain professional must do to excel in various type of supply chain verticals , such as IT, electronics manufacturing, pharmaceutical, retail, consumer goods. Along with understanding vertical specific nuances, this book helps them to set both short term goals for annual performance review to longer term career planning. In addition, to a mid- or senior-level supply chain professionals, the book offers ideas on ways to launch initiatives and demonstrate leadership to foster career growth. It offers ideas about unlocking new values for the organization, and creating a data driven decision support platform to gain financial efficiency for better management of CapEx and OpEx spend, thus improving the bottom line. The book includes a tool kit which includes operational data models, financial models, and presentation templates for creating and socializing proposals intended for cross functional teams and demonstrating supply chain leadership. The book is divided into four major parts. In Part I, the book starts with an overview of key concepts in a manufacturing supply chain and procurement organization. It describes current forms of modern global supply chain and corporate procurement organizations. In these organizations, the roles and responsibilities of a supply chain manager are often narrowly focused to specific work streams within supply chain, such as sourcing management, vendor management, and operations management. To establish oneself professionally in these specific roles, the book provides detailed description of roles, responsibilities and scope of influence for the management of each of these areas. The book presents the nuances of each of these roles in light of different supply chain verticals, namely enterprise and consumer electronics, pharmaceutical, retail, transportation, and heavy industry (oil & gas and mining). The objective of Part II is to provide a frame work for a self-directed supply chain manager to understand how a large organization evaluates the contribution of supply chain managers and where it expects them to create value. To foster career growth as a supply chain professional, the book identifies six key knowledge pillars for demonstrating supply chain mastery: • Technical and market knowledge of the end product and its constituents. • Knowledge of internal product development and sustaining processes and supporting consumption data. • Health and market condition of the supplier. • Ability to create value. • Ability to build internal and external exec relationships with key influencers. • Ability to obtain best cost without compromising quality and lead-time. Negotiating cost, sourcing material and then the logistics of moving the raw material through multiple stages and finally finished materials across the globe, are some of the key areas which needs continuous improvement. As a sentinel of efficiency, removing any kind of wastage leads to immediate value creation and contributes to the margin by improving the bottom line. All organizations need supply chain professionals but many organization may or may not see supply chain as a core function. To have sustainable career progress in such organizations, however, a supply chain person should focus in creating financial and operational efficiencies. In Part III, the book reviews eight such verticals ranging from IT, data center, retail, pharmaceutical, etc. and reviews the supply chain nuances through the lenses of the framework created in Part II. In Part IV, the book goes back to focus on the professional growth of an individual supply chain person in an industry agnostic way. It provides examples of financial and operational efficiencies that a supply chain professional can create. It is a common practice to apply Lean principles to achieve the former in the manufacturing world. However, adoption of similar disciplines in a non-manufacturing environment, specially in an IT procurement organization is not common. In addition, even though the supply chain or procurement organization is typically the largest spender in an organization as it oversees probably the biggest outflow of operating cash, supply chain is often made accountable only for controlling cost of goods. Significant financial efficiency could be gained by creating synergy between the financial organization and supply chain organization via • an operational portfolio management approach • creating transparency around the total cost of ownership. This strategic side of supply chain could be an eye opener for many financial controllers and CFOs. The final section of the book demonstrates methods of application of these two principles to create value and personal growth for a supply chain manager.