Achieving End-to-End Supply Chain Excellence Program

Understand Integration Points and the Impact of Decisions Across the E2E Supply Chain

Supply chains are evolving to serve more customers across more channels. Supply chain teams are signing up more suppliers to improve reach and resiliency. They also are installing new technologies to improve supply chain transparency and responsiveness. Driving success in these major initiatives requires leaders to gain a holistic view of the supply chain, develop strategic mindsets, collaborate across functions and modify processes to manage new information flows within and beyond the company.

Program Features

Achieving Supply Chain Excellence consists of five 1-week courses developed in partnership with Penn State Smeal College of Business.

This program gives leaders an end-to-end perspective on operations and a common language to identify and discuss improvement opportunities. Leaders take the first steps to move beyond seeing the supply chain as a group of functional/tactical activities in a linear chain to seeing it as a strategic entity operating within an ecosystem that includes customers, suppliers and partners.

COURSE 1:

Finding Opportunities in Your End-to-End Supply Chain

This course reviews factors that are driving change across supply chains. Leaders learn why globalization, new technologies, omni channel strategies, sustainability and other factors are forcing supply chains to evolve. To manage this evolution, leaders must see the “big picture” of the end-to-end supply chain to find the next wave of performance improvements and competitive advantages. Leaders learn why higher levels of performance come through cross-functional processes that integrate work done by functional teams and favor performance of the entire supply chain over functional excellence.

COURSE 2:

Improving Procurement Practices

Procurement organizations, once tasked to find the cheapest price of supplies and raw materials, have become a strategic force for developing strong relationships with networks of partners and suppliers. In Improving Procurement Practices, leaders learn why it’s important to set standards for selecting suppliers, create scorecards to monitor and manage supplier performance, and develop suppliers to strengthen their capabilities. The course reveals new opportunities to create competitive advantages through the combined capabilities of the company and its suppliers.

COURSE 3:

Competitive Implications of Demand Planning

Competitive Implications of Demand Planning gives leaders new appreciation of three key practices: forecasting, demand planning and inventory management, and how they impact millions or even billions of dollars in company funds. Leaders explore inventory management practices that can tie up or waste a company investment, and discuss ways to improve inventory practices. They discover why cross-functional processes like Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) are needed to rationalize multiple forecasts and align planning practices across multiple functions. Leaders also analyze the dramatic impacts of failures in these three key practices, such as the ramifications of being out of stock on even a single item.

COURSE 4:

Manufacturing as a Strategic Variable

New and exciting innovations within manufacturing create opportunities to:

• Produce smaller batches and more varieties of products to meet needs of unique customer segments
• More easily shift production capabilities to new locations to meet customer local demands faster
• Improve transparency into information and planning to better synchronize supply with demand for improved customer service

Manufacturing as a Strategic Variable helps leaders consider how all areas of the supply chain can begin to seize opportunities borne of new capabilities and capacities in manufacturing. Leaders also discuss how they can work with manufacturing to build quality throughout an entire value chain to develop flawless products.

COURSE 5:

Critical Decisions in Logistics Management

Logistics management is moving to front and center of supply chain leaders’ attention for these key reasons:

• It provides the pathway through which companies can reach new customers in new markets
• It represents a key touch point where customers expect excellence
• It consumes up to half the costs associated with a supply chains
• It is continually impacted by external factors like fuel costs and regulations
• It’s an area that is constantly improved and transformed through automation (technologies like Blockchain open a world of new possibilities)

In Critical Decisions in Logistics Management, leaders dive into cost, design, and network concepts of transportation, warehousing and other distribution logistics, and consider tradeoffs the organization must make to develop efficient and effective distribution systems.

Download the Course Overview