Advantage: Supply Chain

When tennis players reach that point in a match where they are on the brink of winning a game, a set, or even the entire match, the player serving is said to be at “advantage.”  We at Schneider Electric engage every day in such matches with top competitors.  Only our court is the world of industrial automation and resource efficiency. What brings “advantage” to our customers is our global supply chain. Our scale, agility, efficiency, and responsiveness to the specific needs of customers are way beyond what our competitors can offer.

We realize that delivering the right products on time in an integrated and transparent fashion is the best path for us to press our competitive advantage.  On time delivery is essential for enabling our customers to succeed in a fast-paced globally integrated economy.

In fact, all of us need to figure out every day how we can deliver differentiated value to our customers and the marketplace.  I, along with nine other colleagues from the Center for Global Enterprise (CGE) discuss this concept of customer value, and other themes, in a new book that was recently published: Growing Global: Lessons for the New Enterprise.

My colleague, Schneider Electric Executive Vice President of Global Supply Chain Annette Clayton and I describe how our supply chain management transformed from a cost-cutting function to a source of global competitive advantage.  Below is an excerpt from our co-authored “Advantage: Supply Chain" chapter:

“In the vast majority of manufacturing companies, the supply chain has traditionally been viewed as a cost center — part of the price of doing business but little more than that. We have worked to turn this formula on its head and make our supply chain a source of competitive advantage — for our customers and for us. Fundamental to our strategy has been to embed strategic thinking supply chain leaders into the different lines of business. We believe it helps increase customer satisfaction, and drive topline growth, both of which are fundamental to our long-term competitiveness throughout the world. These leaders ultimately turn the business strategy into the corresponding supply chain requirements for their business without being responsible to operate the supply chain on a day-to-day basis.

The supply chain is fundamental to almost everything we do at Schneider Electric. We fulfill a customer’s order every 1.5 seconds, and we have over 200 factories, as well as nearly 100 distribution centers, spread across 44 countries. In short, we have to get the supply chains right if we are going to stay competitive. (We say supply “chains” as there are multiple supply chains required to service our full customer requirements.)

Our supply chains have a big impact on customer satisfaction, because much of our work for customers is focused on delivering and installing mission critical systems. These systems are quite complex and have to be delivered in line with a project timeline as it develops and then be ready to commission the day the system goes live. We find that delivering a tailored experience to every customer creates a true difference. Because for them, time to market has be- come critical, and if we can help them reduce their time to market, it’s a true competitive advantage.”

Available today, “Growing Global: Lessons for the New Enterprise” offers insight from other global companies affiliated with the CGE, including IBM, Ogilvy & Mather and Yahoo. For more information, please visit www.thecge.net.