Supply Chain Excellence [Electronic resources] : A Handbook for Dramatic Improvement Using the SCOR Model نسخه متنی

Applying the SCOR Project Roadmap

For all its power and flexibility, however, there are some essential success factors that are between the lines of the project roadmap—things like change management, problem-solving techniques, project management discipline, and business process engineering techniques. These are essential to a successful project and are not explicitly discussed. In other words, the roadmap can tell you where to go, but it can't teach you how to drive the car. This book attempts to fill in the lines and provide a comprehensive guide to using SCOR. (See Figure 1-3.)

Figure 1-3: SCOR project approach.

The phases of a SCOR project as detailed in this book are:

Educate for support

Discover the opportunity

Analyze

Design

Develop and implement

Educate for Support

Chapter 2 examines this phase of a SCOR project. Find an "evangelist" in the company who has the passion to lead a supply chain project and an executive to actively sponsor it. Both must be willing to invest personal time to learn SCOR. If an executive delegates this initial learning, the organization will probably fail to sustain change over time.

With an evangelist and sponsor in place, the next step of educating for support is to establish a core business team to buy into the approach and commit to supporting a project with words and deeds.

Even as these steps are taking places, there is a larger learning curve that every company must follow. It begins with general education about SCOR—how it works, the language in which it's written, and the available tools to support it. This chapter provides a basic introduction, but is not enough to be considered a general education like the curriculum provided by the Supply-Chain Council.

The next educational step is conceptual application of SCOR to your own company. At this stage, a real supply chain in the company is researched and summarized as a business case. Then, in a classroom environment, a trip with the project road-map is simulated.

The third educational stage is to apply the roadmap to a real project, setting expectations and results. Using a formal SCOR coach helps to expand the learning process from individuals to the organizations by including necessary teams.

Finally comes implementation of the supply chain improvement projects.

Discover the Opportunity

Discovery (Chapter 3) helps to form the business case that justifies spending money on a supply chain project. It's where the business team sorts out performance opportunities. The complexity of supply chain discovery can be visualized as a three-dimensional box of questions. The first dimension asks: At what performance level is your supply chain operating? The second dimension asks: Do we have the right strategy as well as the right work, information, and material flows to support the desired performance level? The third dimension asks: What other performance factors will impact the supply chain? These include organizational, process, and technology issues, in addition to understanding people-related factors such as skill, knowledge, and ability.

One of the key outcomes from the discovery step is a project charter, which organizes the supply chain opportunity into the approach, budget, organization, clear measures of successes, and communication plan.

The Analysis Stage

The analysis stage (Chapters 4 through 7) is where the value proposition is articulated in terms that the financial management of a company requires: cash-to-cash cycle time, inventory days, order fulfillment, and other performance factors. SCOR helps the team to prioritize and balance customer metrics with internal-facing metrics: delivery, reliability, flexibility/responsiveness, cost, and assets. The resulting SCORcard provides a direct connection to the balance sheet.

Performance requirements are established with respect to your competition and are prioritized by both definitions of a supply chain—product and channel. These priorities will help in the design phase of a SCOR project. The SCORcard also summarizes actual performance against benchmark performance with a gap analysis that defines the value of improvements.

The Design Phase

The design phase is divided into material flow (Chapters 8 through 13) and work and information flow (Chapters 14 through 18).

Material flow and work/information flow are the two key components for defining AS IS flows, uncovering disconnects in your processes, and mapping out TO BE flows that eliminate these gaps. The basic questions addressed are: What are my material flow problems and what's it worth to solve them? How efficient is my work and information flow and what's it worth to change them?

Develop and Implement

This book leads to development of a portfolio of projects (Chapter 19) with a projected return on investment. Developing and implementing each project follows industry standard practices of initiating, planning, executing, and formal closing. The detailed development, planning, and rollout of individual projects is the subject of another book.