Avoiding supply chain blunders
How can projects go wrong? Let me count the ways.
By John M. Hill, principal, ESYNC -- Modern Materials Handling, 1/31/2007
During the past 40 years in the logistics and supply chain business, I’ve seen more than my share of mistakes (and, of course, I haven’t made any of them). How many different ways can things go wrong? Here’s a baker’s dozen of the mistakes I’ve seen too many times.
1. Not asking for insights from your trading partners or from other departments in your organization when crafting supply chain performance improvement programs. They know your short-comings better than you do. 2. Everything has to be someplace – and, someplace is anyplace goods can be stored. Without a plan for where that place is, you may never find those goods again. 3. Using average volumes (package sizes, item weights, etc.) when sizing, configuring and equipping new facilities. Planning for the average means you’ll never handle the peaks. 4. Not considering the impact of a future facility expansion when putting together a storage location-numbering scheme. You want to plan for tomorrow, not just today. 5. Standing in front of a bar code scanner in a striped shirt in an early demo. You end up with a great read – of your shirt. 6. Not reading the RFP all the way through. Skipping one of the paragraphs in an early DoD project sent six million bar code labels to the dumpster. 7. One hand not knowing what the other hand is doing. I once saw a project where the third-shift was using a hot water spray to clean the inside of the laser scanners in an FDA-regulated meat processing plant. It went undetected for weeks, contributing to production count shortfalls. 8. Not performing in-depth supplier reference checks before contract award. 9. Straying from fundamentals in assessing alternative solutions. 10. Trying to quick-fix flaws in process or material flows with technology or systems – a.k.a., SBS or the silver bullet syndrome. There is no silver bullet. 11. Springing (read that as imposing) change on the workforce. 12. An accelerated (and compressed) testing schedule. One facility I know skipped testing, only to send an AS/RS crane through a wall during blizzard just before Christmas. 13. Refusing to admit you need help.
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