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Root causes of various Supply Chain symptoms converge!
Most supply chains have quite a good amount of scope for improving their key parameters of product availability, product freshness, inventory, and cost. I have seen many supply chain teams trying to improve them individually, which often results in deterioration of other parameters.
Instead of looking at the symptoms and acting on them individually, we should identify the various root causes responsible for this underperformance. The common perception is that the set of root causes would be a multiple of the observed symptoms. For example, if we observe 20 different symptoms, we may end up with ~100 root causes. Is it true?
The reality is entirely different! If we perform the famous ‘5 Whys’ analysis on each symptom, the final set of root causes can be counted on fingers. Looks surprising, isn’t it?
In fact, each of the real root causes manifests itself in the form of multiple symptoms. If we address just the 4-5 real root causes, we’ll see a multi-fold improvement on all the important parameters.