Questions and Answers of Managing Supply Chain

4. How do you think the firm’s attempts at centralizing key capabilities, standardizing core processes, and promoting digital mindsets are received by the different, diverse, and fairly independent
3. How do you think this case company finances its digital supply chain improvement projects?
2. What are some examples of competitive threats that the case firm should be aware of? What kinds of digital supply chain strategies might they be competing with?
1. This case company seems to have covered many of the bases needed to achieve transformational performance from the digital supply chain. From the case materials, do you see any potential blind
What would you do to make a business case for new technology investments? How would you measure the business impact of the results?
What could you do to ensure your technology investments are aligned to your supply chain transformation strategy? How are technology investments made within your company?
How do you maintain awareness of new technology that can enhance your supply chain performance?
What actions could you and your team take to more effectively utilize emerging relevant technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, 3D printing, etc. to improve your
Will the deployment of digital technologies enable new business models for your firm? If not, can you think of ways it could? If so, what leadership actions should you take to drive changes in your
7. What can supply chain do to help create more innovative products that will delight customers, increase satisfaction, and increase revenues?
6. What is the difference between a “value stream” and a supply chain?
5. How much support do you think this firm’s supply chain leadership Digital Supply Chain Talent 67 will need in order to accomplish its stated goals and experience performance improvements?
4. Are there individual oriented interventions that will move the needle on the firm’s business challenges?
3. Is the case presenting challenges that are technology focused, or more about organizational behavior?
2. What are some examples of competitive threats that the case firm should be aware of? What kinds of digital supply chain strategies might they be competing with?
1. What kind of digital supply chain segment strategies might help the case company improve in its stated metrics and goals?
Recognize and counteract emotional responses to boundary spanning requirements that are “overwhelming and difficult to manage” for practitioners.
Promote and reward integration behaviors critical to end-to-end digital implementation
Consider creating smaller, independent, cross-functional Business Units to speed transformation
Develop organizational strategies to suit “new and different” or a“part of operating model” culture
Develop and launch purposeful training that helps with skills, as well as attitudes and behaviors Drive Performance and Action
Build communities – be realistic about training, but don’t minimize the importance
Drive a Leadership Imperative involving digital human interactions
Pay attention to culture and build your employment brand
Align with HR (research shows signs of misalignment)
Develop bold new roles now to harvest benefits in the future(“data science engineer”) – SCM and problem-solving skills are still kings Develop Action Plans and Set Goals
Build and interact with communities – pay attention to geographies –outside sectors
Evaluate your organizational culture as well as your current skills
Attract and retain scarce digital talent using new creative sourcing
Are there human emotional considerations that may allow bias or create implementation barriers if left unaddressed?
Is there a standard project management approach to implementing DSC plans? Are project teams permitted to create their plans or align with an organizational approach?
Are you utilizing a rapid project life-cycle approach to implementing your DSC actions? Who do you have in place to staff these project teams? Do you have the right mix of talent and skills?
Where does digital transformation start in the organization? Smaller agile business units? Broadly across multiple segments?
Do digital collaboration tools enable your workforce?
Do you have a digital talent strategy that is explicitly linked to your segmented transformation goals?
Does your DSC transformation plan adequately consider how your organizational structure promotes or inhibits integrated end-to-end behavior?
6. Do you think a similarly designed leadership intervention might have similar impacts and outcomes in your own or other firms?
5. How much support do you think this firm’s supply chain leadership exhibits towards accomplishing its stated goals and experience performance improvements?
4. Is the case presenting challenges that are technology focused, or more about organizational behavior?
3. What are some examples of competitive threats that the case firm should be aware of? What kinds of digital supply chain strategies might they be competing with?
2. Do you think this kind of leadership program could improve the degree of strategic alignment of supply chain associates across a global firm? Why or why not?
1. What do you think of this firm’s approach to driving leadership behaviors and setting goals for itself?
7. Does this case firm’s strategy also account for developing innovative products that will delight customers, increase satisfaction, and increase revenues?
6. How much support do you think this firm’s supply chain leadership will need in order to accomplish its stated goals and experience performance improvements?
5. How could the case company ensure that there is support and compliance from its associates as they begin to transition over to utilizing data and information generated by the end-to-end systems
4. Is the case presenting challenges that are technology focused, or more about organizational behavior?
3. What are some examples of competitive threats that the case firm should be aware of? What kinds of digital supply chain strategies might they be competing with?
2. Is this case example a true example of the digital supply chain we have defined it in this book? Or is it more traditional?
1. How did the case company obtain the support, both operational and financial, to undertake such a large-scale integrated supply chain initiative?
What are the leadership implications of making these ideas happen?
How will you allocate resources and prioritize improvements?
How will you access the data you will need to become more demand focused? Are there other functional areas or stakeholders you will need to involve?
How does your plan deepen or extend the company's relationship with its customers? What are the data sources that will help the company to either better sense, manage, match, or stimulate demand?
What does your team recommend the organization do that is practical and implementable within 2 months?
What can your organization do to improve its level of supply chain lower latency or real-time responsiveness?
What can you do to enable your own company’s supply chain function to take on a greater role in stimulating and shaping demand?
Can you identify and access new sources of real-time data that could improve your company’s ability to sense demand? What are they?
5. Determine business actions: brilliant data scientists, analytics experts, complex data lakes, algorithms, and models ultimately require leaders to take action on insights. Knowing how to react to
4. For data sources you can acquire or access, a plan for how to use it is needed. Big data sets, while exciting to have access to, will not automatically provide useful or accurate insights.
3. With potential strategic data sources identified, develop a plan to acquire it. Identifying data is not the same as having accessible data.Leadership is required to trade or negotiate, influence
2. Determine which data can help: use the models and tools in this chapter, as well as the discussion questions in the next section to narrow data sources to those that are existing, and/or are
1. Determine a high-value business segment: instead of randomly seeking demand data actions across an enterprise, focus instead on high margin, high-value segments that can most benefit from improved
The key to unlocking this value and advantage is a new, robust, and digitally aware supply chain leadership mindset.
Transformational performance outcomes should foster growth that would be inaccessible in traditional practice and should create sustainable competitive advantage through hard-to-replicate integrated
The challenges, complexity, and management demands involved in transforming to a DSC have slowed many firms in their implementation.
The benefits of a DSC for firms can be summarized as uniquely reducing the amount of trade-off between costs and customer satisfaction.
The term “Digital Supply Chain” began to gather attention around 2015. It usually refers to the strategic transformation of supply chains, rather than the simple digitization of legacy business
2. Is the move to a digital supply chain a new, transformative strategy, or simply the decades-long continuation of the digitization of most business processes?or ignore digital transformation are
1. Do you believe a digital strategy will significantly improve your supply chain efficiency and provide a competitive advantage?
Joseph Juran’s approach is more strategy-based than other approaches. Is it a better approach than Deming’s? Why or why not?
Briefly describe what is meant by random variation in statistical process control.
What is meant by process stability in statistical process control?
What is meant by a random sample?
What is an inspection ratio, and what role does it play in statistical process control?
What distinguishes a variable from an attribute? Provide an example of both a variable and an attribute characteristic.
What are statistical process control charts used for? What do they consist of?
Is there a difference between a defect and a defective?Briefly explain the two terms as they relate to statistical process control.
Within an organization, what is meant by change management?
What is meant by the term muda? Why is reducing muda a focus of lean/Six Sigma management?
How do Shingo’s seven wastes help firms to improve processes?
What is SMED? How is SMED related to small lot production?
What options do you think are available to Susan?
Briefly describe statistical process control.
Refer again to Table 13.1. Why do you think Chipotle has gotten so much bad press?What additional steps should it take to improve?
What has Chipotle done to improveor worsen its situation since this book was published? Support your answer with references.
Why do you think Chipotle has come to the point where it is now in crisis due to the E. coli outbreak?-
Do you agree with the NIST definition of customer-driven excellence in the chapter?Can an overemphasis on customer-driven excellence make a company too reactive instead of proactive? Explain.
How does customer contact make service quality difficult to manage?Give examples.
Is ISO 9000 a good model for improvement, or is it responsible for the “bureaucratization of quality?”Explain.
Identify the project’s critical path.
Draw the network diagram for the project.
Why do project teams expedite project tasks?How is task expediting accomplished?
What does the S curve describe in project management?
What role does the beta distribution play in calculating expected task times and task variances in project management?
What is scope creep? How is scope creep detrimental to a project?
What is the student problem, and how does it relate to project management?
What is consolidation warehousing? When (under what circumstances) is consolidation warehousing most helpful?
How does derived demand compromise the integrity and effectiveness of the logistics system?
What is meant by the term logistics sustainability ? How are companies pursuing sustainability?
Briefly describe the concept of bias as it relates to forecasting.

Showing 800 - 900 of 956