Game Show Series (4): You are the Weakest Link...Goodbye!

How many times did Anne Robinson the host of the Weakest Link say this to contestants who then walked out sheepishly, head hung low, wondering how they ended up in this situation.

When considering the Supply Chain, an organization is only as good as its weakest link, and many corporations today are finding that this can result in significant issues for them from a client delivery and revenue impact perspective.

Too many businesses see their supply chain only as the procurement and fulfillment piece through distribution centers to the client, but supply chain is much bigger than just the logistics piece. If one truly wishes to understand a supply chain it begins with a client need and ends with invoicing of the goods to hopefully a satisfied customer.

So what does this mean? Actually that all aspects of the organization are in fact part and parcel of the supply chain. The Sales teams are intimately involved in the process and with the client they establish demand that drives the entire system. Of course even prior to sales is the Marketing group, which works with sales to determine what items should be focused on and be front and center in the marketing efforts. Then there is Finance who works with both the procurement arm, sales and marketing to define an appropriate go-to-market pricing strategy that ensures the continued profitability of the firm, taking into account all costs, and issues surrounding what the market will bear....and so on, and so on...etc.

Usually the weakest link in a corporation is the communication that lacks between these various teams, not understanding the close linkages each of them has to the other and that only by working together can a corporation be ultimately successful. Ad hoc communication cannot replace formal structures that ensure full cooperation and information sharing by all.

To view Supply Chain only as procurement to fulfillment is like putting blinders on a horse...trying to discount other factors that could potentially render a direction unpalatable.

Eventually a blinder view of Supply Chain will result in an corporation's epitaph being: "You are the Weakest Link....Goodbye!"