Program Objectives

The following list represents the Key Program Objectives (KPO) for the Appleton Greene Global Supply-Chain corporate training program.

Global Supply-Chain – Part 1- Year 1Appleton Greene

  1. Part 1 Month 1 Internal Analysis – The first stage of the program is to understand the history, current position and future outlook relating to global supply-chain, not just for the organization as a whole, but for each individual department, including: customer service; e-business; finance; globalization; human resources; information technology; legal; management; marketing, production, distribution and logistics. This will be achieved by implementing a process within each department, enabling the head of that department to conduct a detailed and thorough internal analysis to establish the internal strengths and weaknesses and the external opportunities and threats in relation to global supply-chain and to establish a MOST analysis: Mission; Objectives; Strategies; Tasks, enabling them to be more proactive about the way in which they plan, develop, implement, manage and review global supply-chain, within their department.
  2. Part 1 Month 2 Global Supply-Chain Trends – It is vital that an organization considers the major global supply chain trends and determines how it will address each of them as part of their integrated global supply chain strategy. Some of the current trends we would suggest an organization needs to research and evaluate include: E2E Collaboration, Lean Six Sigma, Management of Complexity, Physical Network Optimization Methods, Risks & Opportunities of Globalization, Focus on Cost & Working Capital and maybe the Impact of Sustainability if this is an internal or external requirement.
  3. Part 1 Month 3 Supply-Chain Sustainability – This workshop features a practical guide to continuous improvement, and can help companies to overcome challenges by offering practical guidance on how to develop a sustainable global supply chain process, based on the values and principles of the Global Compact. Featuring numerous examples of good corporate practice, the guide will assist companies in setting priorities for action that will lead to continuous supply chain performance improvement.
  4. Part 1 Month 4 Developing Countries – Over the last three decades, global supply chains (GSCs) have increasingly gained importance in linking developing countries to international markets. Today a substantial share of the production processes of GSCs is taking place in developing countries. For developing countries and their enterprises, GSCs offer opportunities as well as challenges. While greatly facilitating access to developed countries’ markets, GSCs also demand greater efficiency and competence from suppliers. For developing countries, it is thus important to implement economic policies that while increasing the competitiveness of their enterprises, also improve their reliability and efficiency.
  5. Part 1 Month 5 Process Integration – Integrating a supply chain is an incremental process, with priority typically given to the highest potential returns on investment. Based on strategies, needs, and potential returns, different priorities and approaches may be assigned to the supply chains of different segments of a business.
  6. Part 1 Month 6 Competitive Analysis – To make the right strategic choices about what to do and what not to do, it is important for an organization to understand what the competition is and most likely intends to do. Don’t let your competition manage your profits for you! While many organizations prefer to focus on comparing basic performance data, we suggest that it is far more useful to focus on understanding the competitor’s processes, technology, and network underlying capabilities. Any analysis of available performance data is much more reliable when understanding the competitor’s capabilities. However, only because your competition also uses the metrics “inventory turns” does not mean that it is defined in the same way than your metrics.
  7. Part 1 Month 7 Supply-Chain Technology – Technology helps an organization with enabling and sustaining new processes and capabilities necessary to execute the global supply chain strategy. Reviewing existing supply chain technologies and technology trends may trigger ideas about how to connect new technology capabilities with identified Customer requirements. Just keep in mind that the Customer requirements, not the technology, should drive the development of new supply chain capabilities. How effectively some of these technologies improve or even transform an organization’s supply chain greatly depends on how successful the organization is in hiring and retaining people who can understand and use them. Training and talent planning need to be therefore part of any technology strategy.
  8. Part 1 Month 8 Risk Analysis – The lack of a robust process for identifying, prioritizing, managing and mitigating risks is a clear threat to an organization’s supply chain and its strategy. A systematic risk assessment becomes even more important as an organization decides to compete globally and/or to expand its supply chain to other countries and regions. Unfortunately, without a crisis to motivate actions, risk planning often falls to the bottom of the priority list.
  9. Part 1 Month 9 New Capabilities – In general, a supply chain strategy should look at least three years into the organization’s future. However, that does not mean that the organization then will follow that plan for the next three years without changes or modifications. The global environment is far too dynamic to not make corrections to address major significant changes in an organization’s competitive landscape. To define and prioritize new global supply chain capabilities we suggest that the organization forms a cross-functional strategy team, including resources from sales, IT and finance, and organizes a two- or three- day off-site meeting to initiate the process. The off-site meeting starts with a review of the inputs collected so far. This includes customer requirements, internal supply chain assessment, global supply chain trends, competitive analysis, global supply chain technologies, and global supply chain risks. During the review process, a running list of all potential new supply chain capabilities that could be developed needs to be kept. To rank and prioritize the potential supply chain capabilities, the strategy team needs to determine the estimated impact of each new capability on the organization’s supply chain performance indicators (service levels, costs, inventory & working capital, ROI), as well as consider the human and financial resources necessary to implement each supply chain capability. Some organizations also add a “Probability of Delivery” factor to this evaluation matrix to include a factor describing the complexity and risk associated with each potential capability. Once the strategy team has established that the selected new supply chain capabilities will indeed enable the organization to achieve its goals & objectives and are feasible to implement within the given resource constraints, the team needs to establish a detailed project plan for the new supply chain capabilities selected. The overall project plan also needs to identify how the individual projects are interrelated to visualize that some projects with a lower ROI are actually enablers of projects with a significantly higher ROI.
  10. Part 1 Month 10 Supply-Chain Organization – The implementation of a new supply chain strategy could very well mean the need for a different organizational structure of a supply chain organization. This could include additional people, fewer people, separation of an existing team, or merging two teams that are currently in different parts of the organization. Therefore, a review of the organizational design needs to be part of the supply chain strategy implementation process. Developing new supply chain capabilities and managing them over time will almost always require new skills and competencies. The strategy team needs to establish a complete list of skills and competencies needed for each position and then evaluate the existing people based on whether they have already these skills or if they are able to acquire them. Specific competence development plans need to be established for each individual to ensure that new capabilities can be effectively implemented and managed. Requirements for new hires and associated transition plans need to be developed. A new supply chain organization and capabilities also demand a new set of performance indicators. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) need to be aligned with the supply chain strategy and help drive an organization towards the desired future state. They also need to enforce the new behavior needed to sustain the changes and help deal with trade-offs and conflicting priorities. Please read our article “Supply Chain Performance Indicators” introducing sixteen commonly used supply chain performance indicators. Best-in-class organizations deploy Balanced Scorecards across the supply chain organization to accomplish this. For more details about developing and deploying Balanced Scorecards, please check out our “Balanced Scorecard Development & Deployment” training material.
  11. Part 1 Month 11 Buy-in & Commitment – Implementing a supply chain strategy is a major cross-functional effort and therefore requires the buy-in and support of almost every function in an organization. A solid business case for the change is often not sufficient to gain buy-in, but it is absolutely a necessary condition. The process of getting buy-in at all levels of the organization needs to begin on the first day of strategy development. As mentioned earlier, we strongly suggest that the supply team forms a cross-functional strategy team, including resources form sales, IT and finance, when starting to identify and prioritize new supply chain capabilities. We also suggest providing periodic updates to the senior leadership team and key stakeholders during the strategy development process, emphasizing the significant impact and benefits the supply chain can have in terms of financial performance of an organization and shareholder value. This activity needs to be part of a more comprehensive communication and change management plan that supports the strategy development and deployment process from “cradle to grave”.
  12. Part 1 Month 12 Strategy Execution – The execution of an organization’s supply chain strategy is best managed as part of the Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process and meetings. In case an organization should not have an S&OP process, this may be a good time to develop and implement one as part of their integrated supply chain strategy.