Globalization & the Supply Chain

   “Oh no, the world has gone upside down”… inside out, flip side over, …. it’s just gotten a whole lot smaller.

Companies outsource like mad. We hire programmers from India for 5$ a week, we enlist manufacturers from Mexico, China, Poland, Vietnam… etc. for about 1/10th of what we pay in North America, making the operation of a business and getting Awesome-Product to Impatient-Customer a lot more complicated.

Something that I never really took heed of until my recent months of “real” work and speaking with others is the importance of a company’s supply chain. The fact is, manufacturing will likely disappear in North America, this means that every North American company will have a supply chain that spans the world! This supply chain will require people, resources and tools to track inventory, orders, backlogs, processes … you name it, in possibly several different low cost countries. As it is today, there are so many factors involved, I had no idea coming out of school how important these people who support the supply chain really are!

And as it is, I am finding that those at the heart of the supply chain and essentially at the heart of operations, are those who are able to skillfully manage, communicate and mediate the wants, needs, requirements and explanations between a dozen different parties such as customer account teams, quality teams, manufacturers, OEMs, external logistic teams, external human resource teams…. and the list goes on, all to provide Impatient-Customer with their order of Awesome-Product in as short a time as possible to maintain company competitive edge.

Lesson: Trying to make business simple in an ever complex world can become a headache without an efficient supply chain. Those supply chain folks are important.

April 1, 2008. Tags: Business, Culture, Life, Work. 1.