Posts categorized as 'Gartner Supply Chain Managment'

Event recap: Inaugural Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit a mile high hit

JayMuelhoefer

Kinaxis CMO Jay Muelhoefer on stage with Gerry Hanrahan of Extreme Networks at the inaugural Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit in Denver, CO.
In November 2019, the inaugural Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit took place in the mile high city, Denver, CO.

This article is a summary of the event and how it fits into the Gartner supply chain event portfolio. I hope it will help you decide which events to attend in 2020 and beyond. [Disclosure – Kinaxis was a premier sponsor of the event.]

My overall recommendation is the event is good for mid-level supply chain planning professionals looking for a broad information overview. The top benefit is the networking across peers to build relationships beyond the event.

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And I thought last year’s Top 25 Supply Chain was a surprise

CJWehlage

On the bus ride back to the McDowell Marriott after the 2016 Gartner Top 25 Supply Chain event, I plugged my ear phones into my cell and listened to some Pearl Jam. Their classic hit, Last Kiss, the song summed up my thoughts about the 2016 rankings. So, the supply chain version of Last Kiss would go something like this…

“Oh where, oh where, can my supply chain be?

The trends took her away from me

She’s gone peripheral, so I’ve got to think Core

So I can get my supply chain back to reality”

The “Green Washing” of the Top 25

If you take out the new CSR ranking from 2016, your Top 25 rankings would be:

Actual 2016 Rank Without CSR Rank Wehlage Bold Predictions
1 Unilever Amazon Amazon
2 McDonald’s McDonald’s Unilever
3 Amazon Unilever Inditex
4 Intel Intel Intel
5 H&M Cisco Samsung
6 Inditex H&M Cisco
7 Cisco Inditex McDonald’s
8 Samsung Nike H&M
9 Coca Cola Starbucks Nike
10 Nestle Colgate Palmolive Starbucks

 

Three pieces of edgy insights from this:

a. My Bold Predictions were not far off. I did call the Nike and Starbucks entry into the Top 10. I am bolder on Samsung, simply because they had the highest 2016 Inventory Turns aside from McDonalds. As well, Samsung was 7th in Peer Voting rank, so the other “185” Peer voters agree with me.

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Move over old man. It’s time to meet supply chain planning 4.0

TrevorMiles

What I took away from the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference…

Supply Chain Management is a relatively young practice, though many of the core principles go back many decades and are based on Operations Research concepts. These have focused on optimization and efficiency. Undoubtedly the world is a better place because of this focus on manufacturing and distribution efficiency over the past 50 years, resulting in large gains in productivity and therefore standards of living, initially in the West, but more recently around the world. All of this productivity gain was achieved in the analog phase.

We are now entering the digital phase of business. Even if we discount a great deal of the hype for what it is, hype, the reality is there has been a significant shift to digital. The title of the recent Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference, “The Bimodal Supply Chain: Tackling Today, Preparing for Tomorrow”, says it all. It was focused on the manner in which companies can adapt to the digital world while still operating in the analog world. Hence bimodal. As outlined in the diagram below, the bimodal approach advocated by Gartner is about innovating on top of a stable platform. Once the value of the innovation has been captured and stabilized it can be drawn into the stable platform.

Gartner Supply Chain Strategy

“Disrupt or Be Disrupted — Defining the Bimodal Supply Chain”, 30 December, 2015 Analyst(s): Dana Stiffler | Jane Barrett | Debra Hofman | John Johnson

The keynote, delivered by David Willis of Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, describes the bimodal shift as:

The shift requires a new approach to investment in technology, leadership and talent, taking a more agile approach. The bimodal supply chain combines stable best practices with innovation-seeking behaviors to keep your organization competitive.

I have no question that Gartner is correct in their assertion of the need for a bimodal approach to the adoption of digital technology, whether more broadly to the business in general or specific to supply chain processes. Industry 4.0 is a reality. The Internet of Things is a reality. The only question is how quickly companies will absorb these innovations and adapt processes to accommodate them.

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Innovate to Survive—Isn’t That Already the New Norm?

AlexaCheater

Innovative Supply ChainInnovate to survive. That’s the key message I took away from this year’s Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference. While that may not be exactly what Gartner had in mind—the official theme was The Bimodal Supply Chain: Tackling Today, Preparing for Tomorrow—it was a running dialogue across all the sessions I sat in on.

Their idea of the bimodal supply chain in essence breaks things down into two ‘modes.’ Mode one focuses on tackling the issues your supply chain is facing today. Mode two is about innovation and growth, and the point was made in a number of sessions that you need to do both if you want to excel. If you’re someone who looks forward to change, who seeks it out because it’s inspiring and exciting, then mode two may seem obvious. You’ve likely already embraced this era where innovation across all facets of life has exploded and become ordinary.

To me, innovation, aka what’s driving mode two of Gartner’s bimodal supply chain model, is already intertwined in our day-to-day lives. Hasn’t it always been to some capacity? Innovation is what has taken us from the birth of the internet to this growing concept of the Internet of Things and now beyond.

We know innovation is important, it’s what moves us forward. History has proven that notion over, and over, and over again. Just look at the advancements in supply chain courtesy of innovation like MRP I, MRP II, and APS. Without them, we likely wouldn’t have been able to keep pace with the widespread globalization that has led to extensive supply chains and an explosion in product portfolios. I do agree strongly with Gartner that while we may all know how critical innovation is, we have to face the reality that actually achieving it is hard. Very hard. And in most cases true innovation isn’t just going to happen on its own. At least not in the type of siloed and conservative organizations that are quite prevalent across supply chains today.

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What is a Supply Chain Planning System of Record (SCP SOR), and Do You Actually Need One?

AlexaCheater

Collaboration

How many times have you heard about the perils of having siloed supply chain functions? I know we’ve written about them more than just once or twice on this very blog. And while working inside your own little box definitely isn’t ideal, it’s also not quite the all-consuming, end of the world type evil that is responsible for single handedly bringing down your entire supply chain.

That’s because, in my opinion, very few supply chain practitioners actually want to work in total isolation. In many cases, they’re forced to, thanks to antiquated technology that makes company-wide alignment and collaboration more difficult than traversing Dante’s nine circles of hell. Endless email chains, revision after revision of all those Excel spreadsheets, countless hours spent importing and exporting data to and from various enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. You can see why comparing it to purgatory isn’t that far of a stretch.

So what can these poor practitioners do? Implement a supply chain planning (SCP) system of record (SOR) of course! But what exactly is a SCP SOR apart from another in a very long line of supply chain-related acronyms?

Technology research firm Gartner Inc. defines a supply chain planning system of record as, “a planning platform that enables a company to create, manage, link, align, collaborate and share its planning data across a supply chain — from demand plan creation through the supply-side response, and from detailed operational planning through tactical-level planning.”

Okay, sounds great. But what does that actually all mean, and how can something like that even be implemented?

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Before Adopting a Supply Chain Planning System of Record, Consider This

MelissaClow

Supply Chain Planning System of Record

Supply chain functions have often been segmented into siloed activities specific to functional goals and that reflect organizational structure. Over the years, software has been designed, developed and deployed in the same isolated manner. In contrast to this approach, a supply chain planning (SCP) system of record (SOR) enables a company to ‘create, manage, link, align, collaborate and share its planning data across a supply chain’.1

More and more supply chain teams are recognizing the value this type of planning platform can bring to supporting their end-to-end supply chain networks. However, there are some key considerations to keep in mind when evaluating these solutions, such as:

  • Does it solve the fundamental challenges you face?
  • Is it providing something different from what you have?
  • What are your peers leveraging?
  • Is it uniquely and purposely designed for end-to-end supply chain management?
  • What ROI does it deliver?

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Are Short-Sighted Goals Holding Your Supply Chain Back?

AlexaCheater

close up of broken glasses and snellen chartSupply chains are growing more complex by the minute. With increased outsourcing, companies’ broad market penetration and expansion, not to mention the overall volume of products, it’s no wonder the difficulty in integrating all those internal and external supply chain nodes has grown exponentially.

Smart companies are turning to improving their supply chain visibility to help combat this connectivity problem, but the truly wise ones realize end-to-end visibility alone won’t yield effective supply chain orchestration. It’s just one step of many on the path to achieving higher levels of maturity.

Gartner’s five-stage demand-driven maturity model for supply chains outlines visibility as a key focus of supply chains in Stage 3 (Integrate), but with two more stages (Collaborate, Orchestrate) on their maturity model, it can’t be the end goal.

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Kinaxis Once Again Positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning System of Record

TrevorMiles

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning System of Record Gartner recently published an update to their Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning System of Record and we’re thrilled to be positioned in the Leaders quadrant for the second consecutive time. That makes us two times a leader when you also consider the Magic Quadrant for S&OP Systems of Differentiation.

Gartner defines a supply chain planning (SCP) System of Record (SOR) as a planning platform that enables a company to create, manage, link, align, collaborate and share its planning data across a supply chain — from demand plan creation through the supply-side response, and from detailed operational planning through tactical-level planning.1

In this regard, we stand out from other vendors in the space. This is because Kinaxis RapidResponse is a “one-to-many” offering – a single product that can be used to address a broad array of supply chain functions. It is our technical architecture that allows companies to create, manage, link, align, collaborate and share its planning data across a supply chain, and with customers and suppliers.

Functions have long been segmented into isolated activities that reflect organizational structures and specific functional goals, and software has been developed and deployed in the very same manner. In contrast to that, RapidResponse is a planning and analysis layer that crosses organizational boundaries, planning levels, and time horizons to improve the way supply chain stakeholders work together to make fast, value-based decisions for the enterprise. With RapidResponse, companies create the foundation for bringing supply chain functions together, and maturing or defining new processes as a result.

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