The first survey ever conducted by Supply Chain Insights at the beginning of this year was the Voice of the Supply Chain. This study is designed to be repeated twice a year into the future as a way to gauge the industry and understand pressing problems and opportunities directly from supply chain practitioners. It is now time for the second iteration of the survey. If you’re interested in contributing your voice, please click here. It takes less than ten minutes and we share all of our research openly and in front of the firewall. All prior reports are available in the SCI Community. In this post, I wanted to take a look back at the results of the first Voice survey and see if we can identify any issues that may have changed dramatically in the past 8 months.
Definition of Excellence
The figure above shows how the 61 supply chain executive respondents identified supply chain excellence. When I was in graduate school, most of the definitions of the ideal supply chain relied upon something similar to “right product, right place, right time, right cost, right customer.” This seems to still be a popular understanding of the best of the best supply chains. However, a sizable number of respondents identified the most mature response and identified their ideal supply chain as one that is responsive to market changes. I think this is an ongoing evolution for most supply chain practitioners and I wonder if the new survey will illustrate an increasing number subscribing to the idea of a responsive supply chain.
The Next Two Years
Respondents in the first round of the Voice survey identified four issues as being the most critical to address in the immediate future.
While no one would argue that these four elements are of great importance in improving supply chain performance, I wonder if there has been a shift in thinking over the past 6 months. Especially in light of Hurricane Sandy, is Risk Management going to make an appearance this time around? Or maybe Big Data? Are there other issues you expect people to be more interested in now than they were 6 months ago? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Top of the Pile
Finally, respondents were asked to identify those companies who have the best supply chains. This could include companies of any different size or operating industry and was open ended. Here are the results:
Clearly, there is a wide variety of answers but it seems that P&G, Apple and Wal-Mart have set themselves apart. However, I recently read that a new survey found that most respondents believed that Amazon’s supply chain topped Apple’s. What do you think? Is Amazon now leading the race for supply chain excellence and displacing Apple? I will be excited to see our new results. You have only a couple more days to participate in our survey, but here’s the link just one more time – Voice Survey Round 2.
Thanks and have a great weekend!