One Minute Manager - Ken Blanchard

Hi,

This topic is not directly related to SCM. It is a people management topic. But since people management is relevant in any industry or profession, I take the liberty to post this topic under this blog.

PSN

Key Concepts of One Minute Management

• People who feel good about themselves produce good results.
• Help people reach their full potential. Catch them doing something right.
• The best minute I spend is the one I invest in people.
• Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
• Everyone is a potential winner. Some people are disguised as losers.
• Don't let their appearances fool you.
• Do one minute goal setting in not more than 250 words on a single sheet of paper.
• Take a minute, look at your goals, look at your performance. See if your behaviour matches your goals.
• We are not just our behaviour. We are the person managing our behaviour.
• Goals begin behaviours. Consequences maintain behaviours.
• Praise in public when people do the right things and Reprimand in private when people do something wrong. Do both praising and reprimanding immediately and don't wait till the annual appraisals.

Concepts from "The Goal"

Throughput: It is the rate at which the system generates money through sales.

Inventory: It is all the money the system has invested in purchasing things it intends to sell.

Operational Expense: It is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput.

Bottleneck: It is any resource whose capacity is equal to or less than the demand placed upon it.

Non-Bottleneck: It is any resource whose capacity is greater than demand placed upon it.

"Balance Flow not Capacity."

Flow through Bottleneck = Market Demand

Bottleneck will determine throughput. E.g. Herbie the fat kid on the hike.

Concepts Relevant to SCM

Hi Guys,

I have been going through quite a few web sites and reading material on various concepts which are relevant for providing good SCM Consulting. I am listing down some of the concepts as well as good books which explain these concepts. Do add to this list based on your experience.

1) Lean
2) Theory of Constraints (TOC)
3) Six Sigma
4) Business Process Reengineering
5) TQM
6) Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)
7) Kanban (Pull System)
8) Demand Driven Supply Chain (DDSN)

Some relevant books are Lean Thinking by James P Womack, The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, Reengineering the Corporation by Hammer and Champy.

PSN

MIT Supply Chain 2020

Have you guys gone through proceedings from this project that MIT and Zaragoza are working on? I have gone through few phases only and their findings are quite interesting and informative. Let me know if we should discuss any topic from this through email group (let’s not use blog for discussions)

 

 

http://ctl.mit.edu/metadot/index.pl?id=2299\

 

s a l I l

Supply Chain Standards

Anybody on the project where client has used the SCM standards that Prashant mentioned? I will check more on this and it would be quite interesting to know how theory is used in implementing supply chain software or methods.

 

 

Definition of SCM

Hi Johan,

I like your definition. It is practical and covers all the processes in SCM. You have covered all the Planning and Execution components. One thing that I would like to add is the Key Performance Indicators (KPI's). I like to call it Supply Chain Analytics.

1) Define Key Performance Indicators for the Supply Chain (Fill Rates, Service Levels, etc)
2) Supply Chain Planning
3) Supply Chain Execution
4) Measure performance as per the KPIs set in step 1.

PSN

Memorable Quote by Peter Drucker

Here's a memorable quote by the Father of Modern Management:

"There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."

- Classic Drucker

Neccessary but not sufficient - Goldratt

Hi,

I had been trying to find this book for quite some time. Was able to get it from a online store last week. I think it is a must read for all IT professionals in general and for ERP and SCM professionals in particular.

If we go by the 80/20 rule, this book tells us exactly what are the things that we should really be focusing on when we create or implement ERP or SCM software. The best thing about Goldratt books is that even though they use fictional scenarious, we can immediately correlate them with our real life experiences, customers and projects.

This is a book that all of us must have in our collection.

Prashant.

Standards and Models in SCM

Hi,

Been a long time since did any posting on this blog. Since I joined Patni have been reading about lots of standards and models that are in use in SCM projects.

Here are some standards which I think will last for quite some time, as they have been tried and tested on quite a few big projects:

1) Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR) - This is a generic model which has been established by the Supply Chain Council (SCC) and is gaining a lot of acceptance.

2) Rosettanet - This is a standard for exchanging data between 2 applications. This standard is primarily for hi tech industry like computers, electornics, telecommunication, etc. Many Fortune 100 companies like Motorola, etc are using this.

3) Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standard (VICS) for CPFR implementations - This standard is gaining wide acceptance for many CPFR implementations.

Do let me know if you have come across any new ones that are catching on in the market.

Prashant

Re: Web Services

This was indeed nice article to know what Web Services are but it also left me with lot of unanswered questions like
a. Do applications need to be designed in XML or other such Web Services technologies?
b. Or will there be interfaces or middleware which will act as Web Services between two applications? What if one application is WS enabled and other one is legacy system?
c. Do you know of any of your clients who have used WS or such interfaces to make apps talk?
d. If WS is all about Open Source applications, I do not think any app vendor will make their applications with source open. Thus we will still need WS as middleware between two applications. How will it be different than present middlewares?

My feeling is WS should function as middleware which will take input from any system, convert it into open source/standard message and can send to any system that wants it. This way we isolate applications from challenges of interface building & maintenance when applications upgrade to newer versions or even when new applications are brought in the business operations.

I have feeling that in SCM, when RFID gains ground usage and impact of WS will be profound given that systems likes PKMS, Manugistics, SAP etc will need to read tags and update records. In this case PKMS or POS system will read the tags and update/create records. It will then automatically pass on this information to SAP, Manugistics without need to run scheduled process to run interface transfer.

I think we can go deep into this topic. I will find out what work has Manugistics done or plans to do in this area. Also I am sure there will be hundreds of independent bodies and vendors working on this. Let us discuss what is that we can do to get ourselves up to date on this topic and also how can we add value to our company or clients by bringing in new concept or practice in this area.

Salil