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Improving teamwork amongst the Supply Chain members needs a fundamental rethink.
I have often heard from supply chain teams of various companies that their company has organized an offsite to improve the teamwork. Such offsites help the team members know each other and develop better bonding. However, does it really improve the teamwork and result in a better performance?
The assumption that the poor teamwork is caused by lack of personal bonding needs a serious review. My experience in helping supply chain teams of various companies across industry sectors suggests that the root cause lies in the Measurements system.
If the Purchase team is measured on input material cost per unit, Production is measured on production efficiency and capacity utilization, Logistics is measured on freight and warehousing cost as a % of NSV, Customer Service is measured on customer order fill rate and OTIF, Demand team is measured on forecast accuracy, and Planning team is measured on the overall inventory levels, no amount of offsites will address this basic flaw. Their teamwork will continue to be problematic.
If we want to improve teamwork, we must start with the measurements and align them to eliminate the friction points.