Why CEOs are involving in daily Supply Chain activities?

Traits and quality of Supply Chain Leaders

Supply Chain Leaders are the pillars of organization, the strategy of Supply Chain leaders have great impact on the success of the organization or failure. Nowadays top exceptive management and CEOs are always in contact with Supply Chain Manager and his teams. CEOs usually contacting vice presidents of Operation for any updates required, but since the outbreak of Covid19 and declaration of Pandemic by WHO situation have changed tremendously.

Organizational structure of most of the companies as follows.

Share Holders

Board of Directors?

Chairman

CEO (Chief Executive Officer)

Vice President of Operation

Vice President of Sales & Marketing

Vice President of Human Resource

CFO (Chief Finance Officer)

Senior Supply Chain Manager

Supply Chain/ Logistics Manager

Sales Managers

Warehouse Manager

Garage Manager

Supervisors

Coordinators / drivers

Other administration and operation staffs

Why CEOs involved in daily supply chain activities?

CEOs are responsible to update Chairman about the Sales, level of demand and supply, plant operation and other issues and activities. Most of the big organizations have customers from ministries and other oil & gas companies and their requirements must be met without fail. Ministries and oil& gas companies have always required very sensitive and critical items as a part of their projects. Nowadays even drivers are getting calls from top management for the updates from ports due to the importance of delivery for the customers.?

Due to continuing uncertainties originated from pandemic, middle level managers, vice presidents are under pressure and feel layoff. Many managers are openly saying they are under threat if they fail to show progress in their operation. Executive management request detailed explanation from each managers on how they are going to tackle the ongoing bad situation. Due to late delivery and missing shipping customers are also always on complaint which directly affecting the head of departments especially in supply chain.

Traits of Supply Chain Leaders

Supply Chain Managers must be able to see information intelligently in supply chain activities and take intelligent decision both strategically and tactically.

Confidence and certainty are another most required traits of SC managers.

SC Managers must know how to implement agile and resilient supply chain activities.?

Design and implement a supply chain robust enough to continue operating through supply and demand shocks brought by major disruptions like pandemic, port strikes and natural disaster.

Understand and mitigate potential risks.

Able to drive out fear from his team and make them empowered and help in daily activities.

Need vision and audacity to the end to end processes in organization.

Supply Chain Manager must have holistic approach to deal with organizational requirements.

Supply Chain Managers need to move beyond traditional supply chain competencies such as Negotiation Skill, Material Sourcing, and cost price ratio. He must be able to think SC in strategic term that align with organization’s overall goal.

SC managers must find new insights to improve supply chain and production efficiency.

Supply Chain Manager and Technology skills

?Supply chain managers must have at least a fundamental understanding of a company’s IT infrastructure. Common systems managers should know include warehouse management systems (WMS), transportation management systems (TMS), and other enterprise management systems. And, most managers should understand how each of these systems integrate with the organization’s enterprise resource planning system (ERP).?

Many supply chain processes still rely on manual workflows (management via spreadsheets). But, change is coming. The age of Digital transformation has started to grow in every facet of today’s business. Even in the manually driven process world like supply chain management and logistics. Some trends that today’s supply chain managers are keeping a close eye on include:

Advanced robotics

Internet of Things (IoT)

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Big data mining

Predictive analytics

The Digital Supply Chain. Future of Supply Chain Management

The Digital Supply Chain is the result of the application of electronic technologies to every aspect of the end to end Supply Chain. A complete deployment of Digital Supply Chain technologies would replace all uses of paper, eliminate all manual data entry and updates, and eliminate the need to request (eg. with a phone call) information because you would already have it at your fingertips. End to end electronic connectivity enables performance management and optimization of even the most complicated Supply Chains. By definition this end to end real time connectivity also means that a Digital Supply Chain will be fully integrated all the way from the Customer through to all levels of Suppliers, inclusive of all functions, with transparency and visibility throughout.

Technologies in Digital Supply Chain

The Internet of Things (IoT)

End to End Digital Connectivity

Cloud Computing

Blockchain

Big Data

Artificial Intelligence

Predictive Analytics

Machine Learning

Virtual Reality

Augmented Reality

Voice Activated Technology

Wearable Devices

Control Towers

Robotics

3D Printing and On Demand, Additive Manufacturing

Cyber Security

Autonomous Vehicles

Drones

Software as a Service (SaaS)

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