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How to overcome inertia for major Supply Chain improvement initiatives?
Many Supply Chain professionals have good improvement ideas but fail to implement them. What gets in the way is often the inertia at individual, team, and organizational level. How do we overcome this inertia?
In my opinion, there are three fundamental prerequisites for breaking the inertia. First prerequisite is to acknowledge that the supply chain can be improved, we are not performing to full potential. It’s a difficult first step, especially if the team has benchmarked against their competitors and found that it is performing better on all the important parameters. We should instead look towards the consumer and see if there are any availability, freshness, or assortment issues. If there are, we can improve the supply chain. Unless we create a sense of dissatisfaction with status quo, we can’t overcome inertia.
The second prerequisite is to believe that an improved state is possible, and it is achievable. If we don’t believe that 100% availability is possible, staying at 98% level looks pretty good and satisfying. It’s only when we believe that 98% can go to 99% and 100% that we can overcome inertia.
Even with these two pre-requisites in place, the change process may look overwhelming. Teams are often afraid of taking the plunge if they don’t have clarity on the first tiny action step that they need to undertake. It is important to identify and articulate the first step clearly for the team to break the inertia and start the improvement journey.