Personal Predictions for Supply Chain Management in 2016
I believe that SCM in 2016 will be focused on customers – more than ever before! First, analyzing customer data could become the new core competency. Many companies already got rid of non-core processes. For example, Apple has focused on R&D and marketing but outsourced production to contract manufacturers – a typical smiling curve! Now, companies are increasingly focusing on analyzing customer data and just happen to be making phones or cars. Cars could soon be offered by innovative IT giants from silicon valley who outsource engineering to traditional carmakers. Cars could become “software on wheels”. Second, production will take place closer to consumer markets. While labor costs in China continue to increase (and there is no “new China”!), new technologies make production close to major markets affordable again. For example, Adidas will start production in Germany in 2016 – in its new “Speedfactory”, which is operated largely by robots. This could dramatically speed up delivery to fashion-conscious consumers. Finally, what we will see in 2016 are truly sustainable business models (see my previous blog post). I wish you a good start into 2016!
Future Engineering and Manufacturing Supply Chains
According to a new DHL white paper, titled Engineering & Manufacturing 2025+ – Building the World, the Engineering & Manufacturing (E&M) sector is on the brink of change. The E&M sector is expected to transform over the next 10 to 15 years by responding to this change with intelligent and sustainable manufacturing as well as new business and collaboration models. These transformations will have substantial implications for our supply chains. While traditional supply chain goals like quality, efficiency, total cost, or delivery performance will remain important, future E&M supply chain models will (1) reflect a global network of regional supply chains, (2) focus on risk management to create resilience and compliance, (3) take care of emissions and resources to make the world sustainable, (4) implement end-to-end connectedness and integration, and (5) be agile and responsive. And I agree: In this era of volatility and due to the need to create CO2-neutral business models, supply chains need to be adapted and redesigned soon.
Sustainable Business Models Require a Revolution of SCM
The United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 21) has begun near Paris today. Let us hope it does not fail again – like too many other conferences before. Indeed, time is slipping away and the world will face a bleak future if we do not act now. (A prediction of this future can be found in Stager’s (2015) recent comment.) What we will see are totally new business models or as Unruh (2015) puts it in a nutshell: “A rule-of-thumb I give managers is that if your sustainability performance indicators only improve when customers use your product less often, it means you’re in trouble.” But if business will not be as usual, we cannot afford to manage supply chains the same way as before. Rather we need to revolutionize our supply chain toolset. I expect that a large part of our future research projects will be about how supply chains, as the backbones of business, can make CO2-neutral business models happen.
Update (2015-12-12): A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures has been agreed. The Paris Agreement is certainly not perfect, but it will provide a hook on which people can hang their demands now. This will have supply chain implications.
Supply Chain Scholars, it is Time to Matter in Today’s Debates!
Journal rankings, h indices and citation counts have become the currencies of SCM scholars. But is this really what we should focus on? What about taking part in public debates? Indeed, SCM scholars have a lot of knowledge about the context of global business, including knowledge about social practices in low-cost countries, the pros and cons of outsourcing, and CO2 emissions in end-to-end networks. So, we have a lot to say that matters beyond academia! In their evocative comment, Prof, No One is Reading You, Biswas & Kirchherr (2015) argue: “An average academic journal article is read in its entirety by about 10 people. To shape policy, professors should start penning commentaries in popular media.” In a similar vein, Kristof (2014) in his comment Professors, We Need You! argues: “[Some] of the smartest thinkers […] are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates.” We should wake up and make an impact!
The UNICEF Supply Chain
Last week, I visited UNICEF’s Supply and Logistics headquarters in Copenhagen, together with my International Logistics Management students from Copenhagen Business School. I was very impressed by interesting presentations about UNICEF’s supply chain and the processes of their almost fully automated warehouse. Keep on doing your important work that is essential to fulfill children’s rights to health, education and protection.
Empowering Responsible Value Chains
The Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2013 has opened the eyes of many supply chain managers: Implementing a socially responsible supply chain has, indeed, become an imperative for global corporations and the supply chain management discipline might be in the middle of a paradigm shift. A World Economic Forum report, Beyond Supply Chains: Empowering Responsible Value Chains (pdf; prepared in collaboration with Accenture), examines how companies strive for what the authors call “the triple supply chain advantage” – realizing societal, environmental and business benefits at the same time – and looks at how they intend to achieve it. The authors present a comprehensive set of 31 practices “that provide guidance for companies looking to codify their own specific portfolio of triple advantage improvement measures”. For each of these practices a detailed value assessment and good practices from companies are provided. This report is a good start when implementing a socially responsible supply chain.
Contract Manufacturing
How does contract manufacturing work? The following figure illustrates this.
Sustainable Supply Chains: A Country Comparison
The global not-for-profit organization CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) has published a report: Supply Chain Sustainability Revealed: A Country Comparison. The report was written by Accenture Strategy. “While climate and water risks are apparent, the implications for businesses and economies reliant on complex supply chain models are less understood”, says Paul Simpson, CEO, CDP. “The good news is that as companies transform their supply chains into digital supply networks they will gain greater end-to-end visibility, traceability and access to information to report on their compliance progress and mitigate climate risks”, adds Gary Hanifan, managing director, Accenture Strategy. The report reveals that suppliers in France, the UK, Spain and Germany are identified as the most sustainable ones, whereas suppliers in China, Italy and the U.S. turn out to be particularly vulnerable. The report also shows that Brazil, Canada and India must do more to encourage suppliers to report emission reduction initiatives.
The Ethical Shopper: A Myth?
It has often been assumed that one of the characteristics of SCM philosophy is “a customer focus to create unique and individualized sources of customer value, leading to customer satisfaction” (Mentzer et al., 2001). This assumption has led to business models like Primark, which aim to satisfy customer needs for fashion by making incredibly cheap garments available – so cheap that many teenagers nowadays are used to throw them away after just two weeks. Part of the truth is that such customer needs are not only satisfied by these businesses, but also created by the marketing experts that are part of the system. But to what extend can we expect that customers critically reflect the way they consume? A very interesting article by Michael Hobbes argues: “We’re still trying to eliminate sweatshops and child labor by buying right. But that’s not how the world works in 2015.” Hobbes’ article is titled The Myth of the Ethical Shopper. See also: Supply Chain Management and Corporate Social Responsibility.
G7 Summit: World Leaders Discuss Global Supply Chains
Expectations were low for the G7 Summit in Germany, which ended today. It is thus all the more surprising that the participants have agreed to phase out the use of fossil fuels by the end of the century. When asked about what he – besides climate targets – considers the most important result of the summit, one of the participants, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, made a remarkable statement today on German TV: “Well, this might surprise you, as it is rarely reported on in the news: We had an in-depth discussion about supply chains. Surely, we cannot accept that we, in our part of Europe, wallow in wealth and, in the face of the global problems caused by social dumping, let others pick up the bill for our wealth. What we need are fair conditions everywhere: labor rights, environmental standards. And this is what we will be working on.” It seems that the world’s leaders have put supply chains on their priority list.
