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Are your Supply Chain improvements focused on the major impact areas?
Most Supply Chain teams have a list of improvement projects. The list can be quite overwhelming and take a lot of time commitment from the team members.
A few of these improvements would move the needle substantially on all the key customer-facing indicators. These could be in the areas of supply chain design, demand sensing triggers, flexibility, and responsiveness.
A large chunk of the improvement initiatives adds only a marginal value. I am reminded of a friend who used to say that these are like taking a haircut for weight reduction! Dr. Goldratt used to call them chupchiks.
Many other projects would not add any value at all if these were in the non-constraint areas. Running inside an airplane doesn’t help in reaching faster!
How do we identify the vital few improvement areas? The key lies in using TOC principles to identify and manage the system constraint.