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How do we deal with conflicting objectives in Supply Chain?
I have heard it quite often from Supply Chain leaders that they are struggling with several conflicting objectives. They are expected to improve customer service levels with lower inventory and higher profits. Production flexibility and responsiveness must be improved without dropping production levels. How do we deal with such conflicts?
TOC provides an excellent framework through its ‘Thinking Processes’. It’s a simple and extremely powerful technique. We need to articulate our thinking on the actions required to achieve these two conflicting objectives. As it turns out, these actions are often contradictory, thereby resulting in the dilemma.
The conflict, in reality, is not in these objectives but the actions we think necessary to achieve them. There are inherent assumptions in our logic which need to be questioned and invalidated. Once we change the underlying wrong assumption, the conflict disappears and we end up achieving both the objectives. As Dr. Goldratt said… ‘Every conflict can be resolved’.
I would love to hear your experience in using the Thinking Process tool. If you haven’t used it yet, why not try it on a conflict you are currently grappling with?