WATCH THIS before you Implement your Supply Chain – foundation | resources | enabling process
WATCH THIS before you Implement your Supply Chain
You can basically describe what a supply chain does by explaining plan, source, make, deliver and return. But in order to do those things a supply chain needs to be built on top of a solid foundation of other processes inside of a company. The last group of processes in the SCOR framework is called Enable.
Enable is really a bucket for all of the other things you need to make a supply chain work but that don’t fit neatly into the first five groups. I’ll share the seven specific processes that I think company’s should include as they implement supply chain management. First, most of our supply chain processes rely on information systems. So managing information technology is a process that enables your supply chain. We also rely on people, so human resources management is a supply chain enabling process too. When we make changes to a supply chain we do it through projects, so our project management processes are a part of enable. How we make decision about what the business will do, our business rules, are all part of the enable process.
Identifying your risks and developing mitigation plans can have a big impact on many supply chain decisions, so yes risk management processes should be included. Also asset management processes can play a big role in supply chain performance, especially when maintenance and repair cycles have an impact on your supply chains capacity. Contracts and legal processes impact the supply chain too. For example your contracts process can determine how long it takes to onboard a new customer or a new supplier. There may be other processes in your company that are also critical enablers for your supply chain. The key is to recognize that each of these sets of processes falls within or across different functions in your company. But if they impact how your supply chain performs then they help to enable your supply chain.
It’s common for company’s to overlook enabling processes. By recognizing the need to align these processes with the rest of your supply chain you’ll be building a stronger foundation for implementing supply chain management in your whole company.