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Flexibility is often more important than efficiency.
Most supply chain teams work on various efficiency improvement projects. However, single minded focus on efficiency is often counter-productive. Let me explain with an example.
Factories prefer dedicated lines for various products if the volumes justify it. A line producing multiple items now ends up producing a single item to improve efficiency. Such an action, however, leads to reduced flexibility which hardens more and more with time. If the demand shifts from one item to another and we need to produce both the items on the same line, teams struggle as they haven’t invested their efforts on quick changeovers.
Let’s be careful that efficiency improvement doesn’t erode our important supply chain capabilities of flexibility and responsiveness.