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What can be the "next big thing" in supply chain management?

Written by: Jon Hansen

Article Overview: Network Member Question What can be the "next big thing" in supply chain management? Will it be technology-related (eg. new innovations, new IT solutions etc.) or more market-related (eg. changes in consumers demands and expectations forcing companies to adapt)? Are there any major differences in the SCM developments in different parts of the world? Eg. are European supply chains significantly different from American on Asian supply chains? Will it change in the future? Can we say that any part of the globe is developing faster than the others in terms of SCM maturity? Przemek Pietak Senior Consultant, Roland Berger Warsaw, Poland

What can be the "next big thing" in supply chain management?

Network Member Question

What can be the "next big thing" in supply chain management? Will it be technology-related (eg. new innovations, new IT solutions etc.) or more market-related (eg. changes in consumers demands and expectations forcing companies to adapt)?

Are there any major differences in the SCM developments in different parts of the world? Eg. are European supply chains significantly different from American on Asian supply chains? Will it change in the future? Can we say that any part of the globe is developing faster than the others in terms of SCM maturity?

How do you see the position and role of SCM in the future organizations?

Przemek Pietak
Senior Consultant, Roland Berger
Warsaw, Poland

My Response

Variations of your question has been posed over the past few months on this as well as other social networks.

From a general perspective, I will share my response to one such question which centered on which supply chain technologies would be around in 5 to 10 years, and which would become a distant memory (think CPM here).

But before doing that, I would like to direct you to two articles I wrote in which I took a more globalized view of the emerging supply chain practice of the future. Titled Public Sector Procurement Practice and the Principles of External Economies, Clustering and the Global Value Chain, and the second The FOSS(ilization) of the supply chain: The risks of a strategy centered on Free and Open Source Software (both articles are available through this site as well as through the author), will add a unique dimension to your prognostication undertaking.

That said and without further delay, here is the answer I had alluded to earlier:

There are multiple elements to your question but inevitably technology is largely irrelevant if the viability of the models upon which they are built is not sustainable.

In the realm of supply chain systems for example, Forrester's Navi Radjou linked the lack of flexibility with traditional methodologies to the inherent problems of enterprise-centric applications from vendors such as Oracle. The specific problem is that batch-based supply-chain tools “can’t support swift resolution of supply chain glitches.” The reason he gave is that “these apps need time to collect and synthesize data from multiple sources – even those unaffected by the exception at hand.”

Radjou’s conclusion that unlike “static, linear supply networks, the emergence of “adaptive supply networks” which will be powered by multi-partner processes that are event driven, real-world aware and self-regulating” coincides with a number of my preliminary findings.

In numerous articles, and white papers, I referred to the meta-enterprise application which can create “on-the-go” real-world metrics that can be reliably incorporated into all purchasing decisions on a real-time basis to the benefit of all stakeholders.

It is important not to confuse this with the widely touted Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) promoted by industry heavyweights such as Oracle (Project Fusion) and SAP (Safe Passage). The SOA promise is but a shadow of the real-time capabilities associated with the dynamically synchronized meta-enterprise application.

For a more detailed overview of the Metaprise concept, refer to Part 7 of my 7 Part Dangerous Supply Chain Myths series.

If you would like to drill down even further into the actual differences between the various development models, I have also included a link to an article titled Similarity Heuristics, Iterative Methodologies and the Emergence of the Modern Supply Chain,as well as an excerpt from my newly released white paper, Time Series Analysis, Bayesian Inference and the Development of a Dynamic Supply Chain.

Even though I am referencing supply chains specifically, the same principles apply to all areas of development which is, the model ultimately determines the on-going viability of any technology. Using these as guidelines, you will be able to identify the "dinosaurs" from the rising future stars.

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Article Tags: distant memory, external economies, forrester, foss, global value, navi, network member, new innovations, open source software, procurement practice, prognostication, public sector procurement, roland berger, senior consultant, social networks, supply chain management, supply chains, value chain, viability, warsaw poland



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