Supply chains are global and ambiguous in nature. Those two aspects present a challenge for people. How do you achieve visibility of all parts of the supply chain and certainty on its deliverables?
How far away are your product’s components from manufacturing? Is the finished product with logistics? Most importantly, can the customer track their order? If the supply chain is your team’s responsibility, they must be able to visualize the journey your organization’s product or solution takes through the supply chain. That’s complex and difficult, so visibility remains a supply chain pain point for many.
People are industrious though and the visibility pain point is an opportunity to solve it. At Lenovo, there was great incentive to do so. We deliver solutions to some of the largest cloud companies today who stipulate short delivery windows. Often only a little over a week lies between order to delivery, with delivery being a two hour window! Our customers can’t afford to take their data centers down for any longer than two hours and we can’t afford to be late. With better visibility all the way back along the supply chain to the supply base, we could further improve our already impressive delivery times.
Improvement required new processes and new tools. Meanwhile, the business had to continue to function smoothly and fulfil customer orders. Introducing a new and untested change to something as crucial as the supply chain is risky. How do you know if it will work? Testing your bold new idea as a proof of concept (POC) like we did, is the appropriate way to manage the risk and establish the feasibility of a new idea. If successful, you can then scale up your POC to the rest of the supply chain.
A Proof of Concept in Practice
Visibility of any supply chain often relies on manual spreadsheets and telephone calls to monitor progress of components and finished products. This methodology is slow, yet our clients require fast response times to keep their businesses running.
To improve our supply chain, we gathered together a group of subject matter experts and posed the question, “How can we automate our supply chain information and data, so our clients can be quickly and effectively informed of when their order will arrive?”
Our supply chain is enormous, so our POC began with the separate bases that comprise it. The supply base, the manufacturing base and the logistics base. For 9 months, our experts developed code that would enable our data to flow digitally from one base to another. Once that was nearly complete, we spent a further 6 months testing the efficiency, reliability, security and trustworthiness of our chain. Our POC results became the foundation of the program and platform we integrated into our day-to-day business.
The difference was remarkable. Our supply chain efficiency and visibility dramatically improved and took our delivery time from the low 90s to an all-time high of 96 percent. That means 96 percent of the time we commit to an order fulfillment schedule, we make it.
These results would not have been possible without first implementing a POC. It gave us the time and opportunity to reassess and restructure what we had in place to make it better. Proof at a small scale gave us the confidence to scale up our new approach.
What excites me about POCs is the human story. A successful supply chain POC implementation builds trust with your customers and your employees.
POCs builds trust with your customers
As Lenovo moves from a product-centric model to a customer-centric model, we are developing new services and offerings for our clients.
A successful supply chain POC leads to a company-wide implementation which we can then offer to our clients with confidence. Blockchain is one such example.
We can only speak of the value of blockchain if we experience that value ourselves. POCs enable us to acquire direct experience and knowledge of technologies and processes we can then bundle up and pass onto our clients.
It reassures our clients to know what we offer them is something we have experienced for ourselves. It helps build trust.
POCs builds trust with your employees
As a leader, when you identify a business challenge you automatically think about the resources required to overcome that challenge. As technology continues to develop, integrating new tech, data and automated intelligence is often part of the response.
This makes some employees nervous. They may not say it, but there’s a high probability some of them are asking themselves, “By introducing this new process, will my job be eliminated? Will my work be required anymore?”
However, if you make the roll out of POCs part of the planning for your supply chain, more people will become comfortable with the idea of change. They will be more willing to implement new processes if they know there is a POC that demonstrates a new product or process is not only feasible but better than what you currently do.
A great supply chain POC demonstrates the implementation of a new system will create value for the client while ensuring your employees spend their time on new challenges and not repetitive and tiresome processes.
A proof of concept creates value
I’ve found supply chain proof of concepts strengthens trust with our clients and encourages our team to embrace the change and risk that Lenovo is famous for.
Anyone who works in supply chain knows it is key to the functioning of the business. In supply chain, we are also paid to take the appropriate risk to move the business forward in order to create value for our clients. Proof of concepts enable us to successfully navigate that risk.
About the Author
Renee Ure is Lenovo’s Vice President of Global Supply Chain. She leads a Global Team responsible for effective Planning, Procurement, Fulfillment, Operations, Manufacturing, Logistics, and Engineering for the Data Center Group (DCG). Start a conversation with Renee here or on Twitter.
