Nov
24
Attributes of successful supply chain managers
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Many of us are familiar with different management methods, styles and techniques. But what about the qualities of the managers themselves, the individuals that are expected to carry organizations, motivate staff and deliver the results? Organizations require a leadership/managerial team that excels with a mix of styles able to cope with various scenarios. Not surprisingly attributes and ability vary between individuals with external factors such as organizational culture (and pressure) having much influence over management styles.
So then, whilst it would appear that management techniques are generic with similar methods used whatever the function, given the often complex and varied nature of tasks and workload in the supply chain sphere, what are the qualities that sets an excellent supply chain manager apart from a mediocre one?
I believe that there are four key areas worth reviewing
Effective task management
All roles require getting things done. Getting things done or managing tasks requires close attention to schedule and deliverable. These attributes are typically associated with projects or issue resolution. Supply chain’s are unsurprisingly full of projects – consider
• Outsourcing
• Supplier rationalization
• Strategic sourcing
• Cost reduction
• Technology deployment
• New Product Introduction
• Obsolescence
• Etc etc
These tasks are often of critical importance to the business and the disciplines required for achieving success are modestly different than merely managing staff or transactions. Indeed the disciplines required to deliver a task often do not require significant functional competence in the technical aspect of the task (that’s not to say that no supply chain knowledge is required). Merely if schedule and risk are managed appropriately and the deliverable is obtained the business is satisfied.
Managers will interact with staff to review deliverables, timelines, and issues but often where things are going well the actual management time can be limited to staff meetings. As a result, staff morale resides with the criticality of the task and the performance of the team in its execution.
This style of management is often required in times of crisis. Consider your own business which may transfer personal who excel at this style of management to manage specific projects. These individuals are often very driven and clearly focused on their customer (often to the detriment of day to day activity).
Effective staff management
The skills associated with managing staff are associated with building and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of a team whilst delivering day to day tasks (specifically transactional/execution and customer issue resolution).
For staff managers the strength is in their team rather than their own capabilities, typically comprised of individual staff members with different skills and attributes. True staff management takes the strengths and weaknesses of a group of individuals and develops them to match the continuing requirements of the business.
Managing staff will involve, motivating team members, measuring performance, developing processes, dealing with inputs/outputs (suppliers/customers) the staff manager will be concerned as to how a team executes their task and how that task fits into the broader processes of the business.
For staff managers – close interaction between themselves and their team is key – issues such as their work environment, training, personal development (including remuneration and career development) are of far more importance than they are in a task or project environment.
Expertise and Experience
Without appropriate skills and experience, could anyone excel at supply chain management? Probably not – within any business discipline there is a learning curve where subject knowledge acts as a barrier to performance. Whether this knowledge is acquired through training or simply through on the job experience it is still a necessity. Indeed you could argue that in recent years –the entry level knowledge required within supply chain has grown given the innovations in the market (P2P, outsourcing, global supplier networks etc). Expertise and experience leads to competency which reduces business risk.
Leadership
Leadership is perhaps a bit more intangible – it is the business x-factor that separates a good manager from a great manager. What is leadership? Perhaps its best described as a means to influence. Leadership results in one person developing and communicating a strategy and enlisting and mobilizing the work force to execute it. Leaders don’t necessarily do the activity but have attributes such as ability, trust, charisma and gravitas which enables buy in from the workforce.
Summary
There are different styles of management. There is typically a requirement to position people in roles that match their skills and attributes. Some people are great at managing tasks but are not great at managing people or transactions so businesses find themselves being selective.
A world class supply chain manager is likely to contain a mix of these skills – having the industry knowledge and experience to devise a strategy, being able to create momentum for tasks with enough attention to detail to ensure execution processes go off without issue.
Nov
23
Using wave management to improve efficiency in the warehouse
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Efficient utilization of the labor force is often a key objective for many warehouses. Grouping transactions is often an effective method as it facilitates better staff utilization and can shorten overall transaction times helping to better meet schedules and requirements.
Within logistics this grouping of common activity is called wave management. Wave management can relate to various tasks including allocating stock/inventory, picking, packing and cycle counting.
Effective wave management intelligently groups warehouse activities prior to “releasing” duties to the workforce. The resultant batch of work is carried out together in an allotted time window.
Warehouse management systems are often used to facilitate better wave management (this is common rationale behind many businesses cases looking to implement WMS as it generates improved productivity form the workforce.).
Whilst wave management doesn’t require technology – the advantage of utilizing a WMS for wave planning is that the WMS is better equipped to quickly process the levels of transactions, look for synergy and produce an output plan that the team can follow.
But what activities should you group?
Whilst businesses may view logistics activity in a holistic framework tasks can be broken down into smaller common groups. For example
Picking
Picking is often one of the first activities to be reviewed by wave management. As a process, its probably one of the most labor intense which provides one of the greater opportunities for improvement. Many organizations look to simplify picking by grouping the activity around customers, product groups or destination.
Routing
With routing and picking being so closely aligned its not a surprise to see that wave management can offer improvements. Routing management will usually commence prior to picking (determining number of parcels pickups, schedules, locations etc). Once completed it easier to establish picking requirements.
Cycle counting
Most organizations do not shut down for physical inventory counts. And as such many organizations look towards perpetual stock checks as a means of validating stock. Whilst often an overlooked process, developing a suitable schedule and process which takes account of labor efficiencies can still pay dividends
Packing
Packing activities, reliant on completed pick tasks can be segmented to take into account of customer specific handling requirements (e.g. special packaging or sorting).
Replenishment
For many organizations (especially those in high volume manufacturing situation) stock replenishment is a key task and one which can benefit from wave management. Once again this task is closely coupled with the pick wave. Replenishment tasks are initiated to re-stock Kanbans or forward holding storage locations. Following a pick wave the replenishment wave moves the inventory in the pick locations to the new stores location.
Summary
Wave management can greatly improve the use of labor resulting in increased productivity. There can be many types of waves many of which are closely related. Dedicated warehouse management systems (WMS) usually have some form of wave management functionality.