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Agility in Nature has profound insights for Supply Chain.
The most profound insights for designing an Agile Supply Chain come from observing Nature. Let’s see an example.
The Central Nervous System (CNS) in our body controls most of the important actions. It has perfected itself over billions of years as the finest execution system. Our sensory organs read the environment and send signals to the brain for processing. Brain, in turn, uses logic to decide specific actions to be taken by the organs. CNS is the conduit for the information flow both ways. The whole system works beautifully in normal times.
However, is this logical system of brain and CNS sufficient for our survival?
Unfortunately, it isn’t. There are several life-and-death situations where the whole process of signalling and centralised logical processing is too slow to respond. How does the body handle such situations?
Our body has developed an extremely agile system, in parallel, to respond much faster in such emergencies. We call it ‘Reflex Action’, which is possibly the most agile system we know of. But for Reflex Action, we would have probably got extinct by now!
Conventional Inventory Planning systems in supply chains are akin to CNS, using optimisation logic to decide various supply chain actions. These systems lack agility. We must augment them with Demand Sensing engine to get the benefit of Reflex Action.
Should we still debate if Demand Sensing is essential for our survival?