The Worst Supply Chain in the World?
Is Cargill the worst company in the world? In their new report, titled Cargill: The Worst Company In the World, the environmental protection organization Mighty Earth argue that this is actually the case: “[W]hen it comes to addressing the most important problems facing our world, including the destruction of the natural environment, the pollution of our air and water, the warming of the globe, the displacement of Indigenous peoples, child labor, and global poverty, Cargill is not only consistently in last place, but is driving these problems at a scale that dwarfs their closest competitors.” Mighty Earth highlight several problems in Cargill’s supply chains, for example: “It took Cargill months […] to address relatively simple issues in their palm oil supply chain that other companies had dealt with long ago.” and: “Cargill still does not have a comprehensive approach to prevent and address the growing intimidation and violence of human rights defenders that is widely prevalent in its supply chains for palm and other commodities.”
21st Century Procurement Skills (Guest Post by Christoph Flöthmann)
Our guest post today comes from Christoph Flöthmann, an expert in strategic and digital procurement, who has recently co-authored a new report.
Digitalization already has a major impact on procurement, as we write in our new report: 21st Century Procurement Skills. Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA), process-mining tools can be used to reshape and analyze all kinds of processes. Dashboards, governed by analytics bots, help to detect and prevent maverick buying in real-time without any human input. This is ultimately driving procurement effectiveness, efficiency and compliance. However, the digital transformation can only succeed if procurement has bright talents with the right skills in place who steer AI and manage the remaining high-value-adding tasks: First, digital fluency is a new meta-competency that enables managers to reach their targets by being in command of digital tools. Second, the ability for complex and collaborative problem-solving will be key to master the challenges posed by both digitalization and uncertain markets. Because AI and RPA take over tasks that are rather simple and require a low level of human collaboration, the procurement professionals’ scope is about to shift to highly complex and highly collaborative tasks such as developing and approving category strategies. Finally, procurement needs transformational leaders that are able to empower their teams to strive for developing and applying their new skill sets.
Dr. Christoph Flöthmann is a consultant in Roland Berger’s Operations Competence Center. In 2018, he and his project team were finalists at the World Procurement Awards in London for developing and implementing a digital procurement strategy platform. Before becoming a consultant, he completed his Ph.D. at Copenhagen Business School and Kühne Logistics University, specializing in research on competencies and careers in supply chain management.
The Digital Supply Chain Transformation
“Accelerating technology and automation are resulting in wholesale transformation of the supply chain profession.” This is the key message of EY’s new report, titled Supply Chain: Skills for the Digital Era. It is not long, but definitely a good read. The report states that “[p]rocesses with repeatable elements such as planning, monitoring and forecasting can all be automated and enhanced by robotics, artificial intelligence and advanced analytics”. The authors observe that this leads to a transformation of supply chain management: “Where performance improvement in the past may have focused on the optimisation of individual operational areas, it now needs to harness a broader view that understands, for example, how supply chain impacts on profitability.” The report ends by identifying four future personas for the supply chain, based on their mindset (data-driven vs. vision-led) and style (investigative vs. collaborative): There are technologists, orchestrators, analysts and innovators. Does our research and teaching cover all of them?
The State of Globalization in a Fragile World
DHL has recently released the fifth edition of their Global Connectedness Index, which provides an analysis of globalization, measured by international flows of capital, trade, information and people. In spite of growing anti-globalization tensions in many countries, the report indicates that globalization hits a new record high, as the aforementioned flows all intensified significantly for the first time since 2007. It is also found that the Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, Belgium and the United Arab Emirates are the most connected countries. Europe tops the regional ranking, while a group of Southeast Asian countries beats the expectations by the widest margin. “Surprisingly, even after globalization’s recent gains, the world is still less connected than most people think it is,” comments one of the report’s co-authors, Steven A. Altman. “This is important because, when people overestimate international flows, they tend to worry more about them. The facts in our report can help calm such fears and focus attention on real solutions to societal concerns about globalization.”
Assessing Tobacco’s Global Environmental Footprint
“Cigarette production and consumption have seen dramatic growth in recent decades and although the health effects of smoking are widely recognized, its impacts on the environment are largely overlooked”, the authors of a new World Health Organization report argue, which is titled Cigarette Smoking: An Assessment of Tobacco’s Global Environmental Footprint Across Its Entire Supply Chain (pdf). The report explicitly takes a supply chain perspective: “From tobacco cultivation and curing, to cigarette manufacturing, distribution, consumption and discarding, every stage in the global tobacco supply chain involves considerable resource inputs, and results in the production of wastes and emissions. Consequently, tobacco puts pressure on the planet’s already stressed natural resources and its fragile ecosystems, threatening the livelihoods and future development of communities around the world.” What I learned from the report is that “tobacco’s total environmental footprint is comparable to that of entire countries and its production is often more environmentally damaging than that of essential commodities such as food crops”.
The Beginning of the End of the “Extended Workbench”?
Exports can be decomposed into a foreign value added (FVA) and a domestic value added (DVA) component. FVA is a key measure of the importance of global supply chains. It refers to the imported goods and services incorporated in a country’s exports. DVA relates to the contribution of a country’s own (i.e. domestic) factors of production. The 2018 World Investment Report, recently published by UNCTAD, shows that “[f]rom 1990 until 2010, the share of FVA in total exports rose continuously, contributing to the growth in global trade” and, “in the past decade, for the first time in 30 years, the growth […] has come to a halt, with the share of FVA declining to 30 per cent in 2017”. But what are the reasons for a declining importance of the “extended workbench” model? First, the model is based on arbitrage; however, the economic success of emerging countries has led to an increase in labor costs. Second, manufacturing in high-wage countries is becoming increasingly profitable due to recent advances in robotics.
The European Meat Industry’s Environmental Catastrophe
A new research report, provided by Mighty Earth, argues that “[deforestation] is the result of a long supply chain that starts on the South American frontier and ends on European plates”. The report is titled The Avoidable Crisis. It reveals that a small group of companies controls the global agricultural trade: “These companies collectively control the majority of global grain trade […]. In addition to their role in trade, these companies also play a more direct role in driving ecosystem conversion by providing plantation owners with financing, fertilizer, infrastructure, and other incentives for new deforestation to expand their supply base. Given their outsized role, these companies have the power to insist that suppliers protect native ecosystems and land rights. But so far, these companies have prioritized reckless expansion over even easy conservation wins.” The authors argue that “[the] EU must send a strong signal to the market by requiring that companies implement measures for transparency and traceability into their supply chains”.
Business Success through Sustainable SCM
Are business success and sustainability contradictory? A new white paper by Schmidpeter & Bungard, sponsored by DHL, is rather optimistic and argues that both goals can instead be mutually beneficial. The paper is titled Unlock the True Value of Your Supply Chain: Business Success through Sustainable Supply Chain Management. The authors state: “Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) can help drive positive business change by helping companies save costs, strengthen ‘license to operate’ and generate additional revenue streams.” But the authors also acknowledge that “[a]lthough there are good tools and best practices available for integrating sustainability into your business, there is no silver bullet that will let you realize the benefits of SSCM overnight”. They also acknowledge that the Sustainability department should not do it alone: “The topic of sustainability should be on the agenda for every leader and employee within a company”. The white paper might partly be quite optimistic, but it provides several good practices from business reality.
The Avocado Supply Chain
Among the best ways to teach supply chain management is by discussing different types of real-world supply chains. In their interesting report, Enabling Trade: From Valuation to Action, the World Economic Forum (in collaboration with Bain & Company) present several supply chains that could be discussed. The introdution makes one point clear: “The overall benefits to nations, producers and consumers are clear. However, making it happen is not as simple – particularly because supply chains cut across multiple stakeholders, requiring collaboration and leadership that goes beyond local constituents and borders.” This is where the report delves deeper into examples of practical application. Among the examples presented in the report is the avocado supply chain. This example demonstrated how “a number of supply chain improvements have enabled Kenyan avocados to be profitably exported to high-value markets in the European Union”. It illustrates that supply chains “must be able to react to changes in market dynamics in order to maintain a virtuous cycle”.
Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Supply Chains (Guest Post by Wolfgang Lehmacher, Forum)
My guest post today comes from Wolfgang Lehmacher, who presents a white paper prepared by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with BVL International.
The report, titled Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Supply Chains, provides preliminary considerations for Fourth Industrial Revolution-driven supply chains. Based on the impact on supply chains of advanced technologies, in particular the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, enterprise wearables and additive manufacturing, the report highlights seven areas of focus for business and government: new roles and responsibilities, supply chain performance, agile organizations, ecosystem for skilling, support for SMEs, leadership and neutral platforms. The Fourth Industrial Revolution changes the way in which we produce and manage the supply chain, and paves the way for the creation of new value chains. The following developments are expected to play a major role in this process going forward: Open innovation, i.e. greater openness of companies towards involving both other companies and their customers in innovation and development processes, distributed manufacturing as an approach to the comprehensive decentralization of production structures and the elimination of classic manufacturing paradigms, and new collaboration models between companies, primarily horizontally, but also vertically.
Wolfgang Lehmacher is Head of Supply Chain and Transport Industries at the World Economic Forum. During his career he was Partner and Managing Director (China and India) at the global strategy firm CVA and President and CEO of GeoPost Intercontinental. He is member of the IATA Air Cargo Innovation Awards Jury and the Logistikweisen, a think tank under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry BMVI. He is FT, Forbes, Fortune, BI contributor and author of books, including The Global Supply Chain – 2017 and How Logistics Shapes Our Lives – 2013 (German).
