Achieving the Perfect Order
Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of Straight Talk. Inside, we discuss:
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The Perfect Order
Some of you are familiar with Norman Katz. Katz, president of supply chain technology and operations consultancy Katzscan Inc. has been a monthly contributor to Supply Chain Management Review as part of our Visionaries section of leading thought-leaders. You can read all of his work here: https://www.scmr.com/author/nkatz
The author of several books, including ?“Detecting and Reducing Supply Chain Fraud” (Gower/Routledge, 2012), “Successful Supply Chain Vendor Compliance” (Gower/Routledge, 2016), and “Attack, Parry, Riposte: A Fencer’s Guide To Better Business Execution” (Austin Macauley, 2020), Katz specializes in vendor compliance, ERP, EDI and barcode applications. He is also a fencing instructor in case you wish to take up the sport!
Last year, Katz approached me with an idea. He had been enamored with an article written in 2005 by Dr.? Edward J. Marien that laid out the Customer’s Bill of Rights. But, he felt it needed to be expanded, especially as logistics and supply chain has evolved.
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What is the Customer’s Bill of Rights?
Marien, who was a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, laid out his vision of what a customer should expect for every order. “I was absolutely in admiration by what Dr. Marien had so clearly outlined, because what he described was—to me—not just what a customer should be deserving of for every order, but what I truly believed was the definition of a perfect order, regardless of who the customer is, regardless of what the customer ordered, regardless of the situation,” Katz wrote.
What Katz approached me about was updating that Customer’s Bill of Rights. What he wanted was to write the definitive piece on achieving the Perfect Order. As he wrote, “So, in essence, we know what we want the strategic objective to be for The Perfect Order. Piecing together the tactical goals to accomplish that purpose has been pretty much left to the designs of the vendor/consumer goods companies. We can look at different best practice perspectives gleaned from seminars, but what we don’t have is a structured end-to-end approach to follow. This makes it a challenge to be successful. If an industry wants its members to achieve, I think that it behooves them, or rather, it is a responsibility, to create a workable model or framework that can be used as a guide for success.”
So was born the Perfect Order series.
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Defining the Perfect Order
The Perfect Order is a key performance metric in supply chain management that measures the accuracy and efficiency of order fulfillment. An order is generally considered "perfect" if it meets four critical criteria:
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But, as Katz explains, that is rarely achieved. In his article series, he tries to help companies identify the steps and processes necessary to achieve that Perfect Order.
Individually, each article in the series presents a topic, such as barcodes or getting the product and quantity right. Katz takes these basics, incorporating Marien’s Customer’s Bill of Rights, and updates the definitions to apply to supply chains of today. Collectively, they offer a look at all the steps involved in perfecting that Perfect Order. There is also bonus content for many of the articles. Presented as an “Explainer,” these articles offer a deeper look at the concept presented in the related Perfect Order article.
Originally conceived by Norman Katz as the basis of a potential book, Katz offered the content to Supply Chain Management Review to publish as a series of articles that, when taken collectively, paints the picture of how supply chains can find the Holy Grail of The Perfect Order.
The entire series is available on scmr.com. If you want the entire series in ebook form, Katz has made that available here.
Understanding chaos
There is no question that the Trump administration has ushered in a period of trade uncertainty for businesses. Will there be tariffs? On whom? How much? If it seems like it is changing on the daily, you are correct. Rosemary Coates, an expert on nearshoring and reshoring and executive director of the?Reshoring Institute, is passionate about trade. She has spent her life involved in global trade, and her Frictionless Supply Chain podcast often deals with issues related to trade and nearshoring/reshoring. This past week, she spoke with ?Karen Murphy, an international trade advisor and trade compliance expert, to discuss how technology changes, globalization, and the rise of manufacturing in China over the past 25 years have shaped trade compliance regulations. And why changes in strategy by the Trump administration are affecting trade practices. Take a listen. ?
Gartner launches monthly alert service
Our friends at Gartner have introduced a new Supply Chain Alert service that offers monthly updates on key supply chain details, including material pricing shifts across industries, demand-driven transportation constraints, and employment rates in key geographies. There is also in-depth analysis by industry experts and an overview of near-term risk events. One of the benefits of it, in addition to up-to-date key indicators, is access to downloadable presentation slides to help the C-suite articulate the challenges the business is facing. More information on the research can be found here.
What I read this week
Warehouses are the centerpiece of a strong supply chain strategy, enabling the efficient movement of goods, but they do require a strategic approach. … A new survey found that just 15% of CSCOs are moderately prepared for tariff disruptions. … Winston Churchill’s leadership during WWII was unquestioned. But there are supply chain lessons we can take away as well. … ProMat, one of the world’s top events for manufacturing and supply chain, kicks off this week in Chicago. … The EPA plans to roll back much of the Biden administration’s Clean Trucks Plan, which was crafted to reduce emissions from commercial vehicles.
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Thank you for reading,
Brian