Supply Chain Careers – A New World

Companies around the world need A-player supply chain managers with strong operations skills, who can balance attention to detail - with strategy.  When we started CaseStack, Supply Chain Management (SCM) seemed like an afterthought. Recently, it’s become a key element of competitive advantage for the winners in everything from manufacturing, distribution to omni-channel retail.   

Great supply chain managers are the key for companies to produce and deliver products faster, cheaper and better. It’s all about precision, fast responses, good organizational skills, and the ability to multi-task. It is make-it-or-break-it: Collaborating and integrating, within a company and between companies - the flow of goods, data, and multifunctional resources (including people and energy) – from origin to point of consumption.

Consumers are more demanding than ever – they need it NOW and at the lowest possible cost.  It involves warehousing, distribution and transportation, sourcing and supplier management, operations management, inventory and forecasting, big data analysis, sustainability and global operations.

We started CaseStack to give trading partners a supply chain competitive advantage, and we are able to fulfill the promise if our people are experts.  Through collaboration, hard work, intellectual curiosity, excellence and determination, we've been removing supply chain friction, so we can work together towards excellence. 

We have amassed so much knowledge pertaining to the big picture; but also to the day-to-day movement, preparation and handling of products. We are planning to share some of our experience with more of an ‘open source’ mentality than the industry is accustomed to.  If it helps our trading partners; it helps consumers, and it helps us.  With that in mind, we are working on a “Freight University” YouTube Channel (coming in February). 

We are going to try to demystify and simplify SCM – with brief, high quality, easy to understand videos aimed to simplify, rectify and qualify the world we work in.

Dan is the President and CEO of CaseStack, a Board Member of The Center for Retailing Excellence, and the author of Collaborate: The Art of We.