[Download] 6 Major shifts in Business Focus due to Supply Chain Management

As the supply chain management field has broadened and shifted over time, and as the term has been coopted and redefined by various interests, many views of supply-chain management have emerged. Some are detailed and operational; many focus on information technology. Executives are often uncertain about what falls within the field and how to use the key concepts to enhance their businesses. They want to know, “What is supply-chain management, really, for me and my company?”

Shorter product life cycles and greater product variety increased supply-chain costs and complexity. Outsourcing, globalization and business fragmentation made it imperative that the issue be tackled from the point of view of the entire supply chain, rather than the more limited view of an individual company. And advances in information technology fostered real-time information sharing, coordination and decision making among companies.

Supply-chain management has led to six major shifts in business thinking.

Each shift has redefined management’s view of what business question is being asked, as well as what information will be collected and shared and how it will be disseminated.

It is not that the old questions no longer matter, but that either the old question is encompassed by the new one or there are greater opportunities in addressing the new question.

Although enablers have had vast impact on supply chains, focusing on them can lead managers to make investments that yield little real supply-chain improvement. Much of the disappointment with industry initiatives and major software projects (such as ERP, enterprise-resource-planning implementations, or supply-chain planning software) can be traced to a managerial focus on enablers rather than on the business problems.