Supply Chain

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. -Albert Einstein

At a Glance

• The outbreak of an epidemic has brought the global supply chain to a halt, pushing major global economies towards a crash of financial markets and recession. The focus at this time should be safety, recovery and cure instead of worrying about lack of essentials due to stunted supply chains.
• There is a need to create an ecosystem of businesses that are collaborating through a well coordinated and integrated supply chain to allow more stability even in a crisis.
• Many factors that are well thought out can contribute to a better global technological footprint where businesses across the globe can facilitate more growth and well-being of economies.

Introduction

During difficult times the world requires better ways to function without taking the entire economy down. One such event is the Coronavirus outbreak that caused a ‘slow down to shut down’ of all businesses due to the pandemic. Since the 90s when the computer technology revolution happened, we have seen various situations of slump and recession that gave rise to newer ways to function and advent of disruptive technologies changing the face of the world. Increased globalization and interdependence on different economies made the world a better place with enhanced living conditions and more opportunities to easily navigate through the world.

Many disruptive technologies came to life during the last 3 decades that are now in every man’s pocket. We all know what they are. Smartphones, Internet, Direct to consumer tools, Search portals, AI, ML, BOTS, IOT,…..and the list goes on. This coronavirus pandemic however is showing us that we are not fully integrated yet. Why has the world slowed down when we have so many technological advancements and tools out there that were created to never face this situation? As such countries need to focus on safety, recovery and cure instead of worrying about not being able to supply essentials due to social distancing. This is not a case of a tsunami that has destroyed road infrastructure, it is merely a need for people to work remotely and avoid exposure, and an inability to control movement of the supply chain from the comfort of your home.

By 2023, over 30% of operational warehouse workers will be supplemented by collaborative robots.Source: Gartner, 2020 report

With this statistic, you would never really expect to see businesses or trades freeze, as operations would run smoothly with a proper collaboration.

A major blind spot has surfaced. A lack of being able to control the global supply chain seamlessly from a remote location with the press of a button. This lack is causing millions to lose their life savings in 401K plus other investments, driving to a bad economic situation. By the time the world has recovered from the pandemic, you are now dealing with an unplanned financial mess.

Added to that is an unfortunate imbalance in prices of all commodities as they are unable to handle the reaction of the slowdown impacting life of an average consumer and creating a downward spiral in the market sentiment as well as lowering the morale of people. Natural course of life is always towards moving upwards until a huge obstacle surfaces due to such incidents. The blind spot here is:

• not being able to foresee a situation that could force us to stay isolated and is not enabling us to move things around without any hindrance.
• of a holistic system that does not have enough integration between all the isolated systems that are in place.

We have seen glimpses of hightech warehouses with inventory arranged on pallets, controlled by bots that receive an order and move them to packaging areas. But taking the vision further, imagine the following scenario:

A hightech warehouse with functions such as inventory management, packaging and shipping, fully handled by bots controlled through a device by a warehouse operator, shipment load planning done through a bot, and shipment automatically scheduled once the transportation planner firms the plan. A truck that is in-transit can be monitored by the planner. All of this is achievable through integrated technology that can manage the supply chain at every point of operation.

By 2022, application integrations delivered with robotic process automation (RPA) will grow by 40% year over year.Source: Gartner, 2020 report

This is just one use case of moving material from one point to another. There is a lot more importance given now than ever to automate operations within the warehouse. During an unforeseen situation, operations should still run without jeapordizing customer orders.

Where is the integrated technology?

With all the advancements in technology, a larger number of people still saw the required changes in digitization as a total unnecessary spend. Very few players would have foreseen the need to automate their business operations and integrate them into an overall supply chain. You would often see technologically advanced companies thrive even in difficult market conditions.

What are the success factors to build a strong ecosystem that can lower the possibility of a breakdown in supply chains?

• Thought leadership that encourages adaptability and technology centricity. This is a repeated message given to businesses through many sources that educate leaders, helping them to make the correct decision. A general shift in thought process would help companies move the economy along with their own well-being towards a greater picture of a business process revolution.
• A smart supply chain and end consumer planning mechanism to suggest the right actions. Businesses at different levels of the value chain need to quickly make business decisions to move their operations forward.
• A unified platform that can track operations and notify the status of an operation to relevant personnel at various touch points in the overall supply chain, ensuring continuity in the process and avoiding a breakdown.
• Connected devices through IOT that can pass on signals to automatically perform the next step in the process via a controlled signal from the warehouse operator or supervisor.
• Indicators set for different thresholds on the devices that are automated to gather information early on and proactively handle any issues or problems that could surface.
• Advanced analytics that are more geared towards how the individual business is trending in comparison to how the entire value chain is functioning, basically a business that is part of the value chain has to be in sync with the overall supply chain.
• Integrated technology that enhances the ability to understand the market situation, assess and recommend the business users to make various business decisions such as stocking up inventory, optimizing spend and scale up or scale down of business initiatives.

If larger and midsize companies are progressing towards adopting versatile technologies, smaller businesses that want to emulate the larger market leaders would need adoption of similar platforms.

Obviously the 7 points listed above are not the only factors that can boost trends to the next generation supply chain, but emphasising and being aware of the above can definitely help you decide if you have invested in the right tools that will propel your business forward. The trend would be geared towards better integration of all technological elements, be it collaboration, process automation, connectivity, analytics and recommendations through artificial intelligence ultimately controlled by a person. This infrastructure should cater to small businesses who especially are more spend conscious and may hesitate to do the right thing due to a fear of draining cash.

Intelligent process is not a buzzword, but a necessity to move your business forward and help the world economy be more stable.

Key Takeaways

• It is high time that life is controlled through a remote set of connected devices under the control of real people.
• Man is still the master of a fully connected and well integrated technology that enhances the ability to collaborate and communicate with each other.
• The objective is to make it easy on the individual or business encouraging them to make the decision in favor of business continuity and overall economic development.

REFERENCES

Why Specialty Chemical Distributors Need to Raise Their Game 

At a Glance

• Per Harvard Business Review, US corporations lose half of their customers every five years on an average, unable to meet their demands and needs on-time.
• An industry report* showed that on-time delivery motivates 72% of customers to repeat purchase from the same seller.
• The most important step towards achieving optimal on-time delivery metrics involves solving operational issues at the grass root level.
• Organizing a well-structured Daily Operational Meeting (DOM) not only increases productivity but also improves customer service.
• 61% customers in the United States reported that they would even prefer paying to receive their purchases on the day they order, per Logistics Bureau.
• Implementing a modern ERP solution will streamline your business processes, meet customer requirements and ensure on-time delivery.

In Part 1 of this series, we brought out the challenges like lack of communication across departments and inefficient business processes that hinder the on-time delivery of products.

As discussed in the prior blog, a few Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are critical in measuring delivery performance in logistics and supply chain operations are:

• On-Time Delivery (OTD) or On-Time Performance (OTP)
• Delivery in Full (DIF)
• Delivery in Full On-Time (DIFOT), On-Time Delivery in Full (OTDIF) or even On-Time in Full (OTIF)
• Cost as a percentage of sales
• Inventory Turns (days)

Consistent problems with OTD not only affect your business and its reputation, but also customer relations and company’s supply chain. On-Time Delivery in Full (OTDIF) can be impacted due to a variety of reasons. To name a few:

• Bad forecasts
• Supplier delays
• Quality delays
• Product rejections
• Other technical and operational issues such as ineffective Material Resource Planning (MRP) system and outdated ERP system.

Per McKinsey, poor service levels cost the US CPG industry a staggering $24 billion dollars a year. –McKinsey

Steps like identifying the root cause of late deliveries and prioritizing to avoid them coupled with an effective plan to get rid of such problems help your organization increase your on-time delivery metrics and productivity.

In this part, we will highlight the remedial measures that need to be taken to enhance DIFOT metrics.

Since bringing in a crop always starts with harvesting the “low-hanging fruit”, I decided to get my team together to discuss the challenges that we faced to know where to begin. In considering the lack of solid processes, planning and communication challenges, I instituted daily operations meetings. What followed wasn’t rocket science, but pure magic.

What is Daily Operations Meeting (DOM)?

An operations meeting is conducted to discuss and review the process, progress and performance of the team, evaluate the pre-defined goals in key performance indicator, identify and analyze the issues and come up with a corrective plan to improve the overall operational performance.

01. Organizing the Daily Operations Meeting

You might think, “It’s just a meeting – how complicated could organizing it be?” Who should attend, who should document the meetings, what are the ground rules, what will be the structure/flow of the meetings, and what will be the frequency? These questions must be answered and you will only get one chance to encourage buy-in from the team.

Organizing a daily operations meeting can be quite tricky and complicated. You need to plan in advance the following factors:

• Plan the target audience/attendees for the meeting and clearly define who will attend the meeting.
• Plan the documentation process and define who will maintain the minutes of the meeting.
• Define the ground rules.
• Organize the structure / flow of the meeting and its frequency.

I decided to start with a core team that consisted of the Customer Service Manager, Supply Chain/Procurement Manager, Director of Operations, Quality Manager and Engineering/Maintenance Manager and added Operations Supervisors and VP; sales later.

I scheduled these recurring daily meetings and asked my Customer Service Manager to document the meetings with minutes that would be placed on a shared directory. I established some ground rules intended to get everyone to participate with one common goal: an improved OTD percentage.

02. Structured Operations Meeting

An effective operations meeting must have a properly organized predefined structure to achieve the purpose of the meeting – an improved OTD percentage. We should plan the agenda of the meeting in advance, prioritize the problems as to which issue to be addressed first, what comes next and must strictly adhere to the structured agenda.

There had not been an Operations Meeting in more than two years and the team was skeptical that this would provide value. Instead, they saw it as another thing to steal the valuable time. I began with expressing the ground rules:

• Be professional;
• Recognize we have a common goal;
• Recognize that passion drives energy that can be perceived as hostile, but that is intended to drive positive change and comes from an honest place;
• Trust each other;
• It’s not a blame game; and
• No finger-pointing.

The structure of our meeting started with an analysis of past due orders and expected receipt dates. We evaluated and came up with solutions to control past due orders and to accelerate receipt.

Then we looked at open work orders for the day/week and discussed any quality and maintenance needs that would create bottlenecks or delays. We discussed solutions to challenges that were brought to light and immediately determined that we needed to revise some processes and SOPs and, most importantly, work together.

03. How Our Team Improved – The Rapid Result

When the first major problem was brought to light in one of our meetings, the finger-pointing started (old habits are hard to break). But, over time the team realized that we were in this together, learned to be honest with each other and, most importantly, to be accountable for our own actions.

Within 90-days, our TEAM improved OTD from 76% to 98%. The biggest driver for this positive change was improved COMMUNICATION.

Insights to quickly help you improve your On-Time Delivery plan

Having discussed the challenges faced during OTD and the solutions to overcome such challenges, we will be taking it a step further and provide a winning a formula for actualization of our organizational goals.

Sharing success and acknowledgment of failure is motivational when success and continuous improvement are realized throughout an organization. It’s amazing what simple recurring operations meeting can produce.

01. Reliance on Systems and Team Members (Trust)

Improved demand forecasts and a systematic approach to surveying suppliers so that lead times can be updated to reflect current realities, along with a meticulous review of demand history and ongoing updates of safety stock levels, is the first step to convincing a team to increase its reliance on technology planning tools. This reliance will enable on-hand material availability and provide clear vision of customer requirements for improved production planning, including optimized machine utilization and labor resource availability. The more we rely on our systems, the more we improve and isolate opportunities for further improvement. As we gained more and more reliance on our systems and processes, we saw our OTD percentage increasing rapidly.

02. Improved Training Programs (Communication & Goal Congruence)

Heightened communication within the environment brought training deficiencies bubbling to the surface quickly. They were countered with focused training programs- ones that promoted improved safety, quality, operational efficiency and productivity. As issues were vetted in our operations meetings, we worked with our Human Resources team to implement improved training and saw an immediate correlation to reduced scrap and safety-related instances.

03. Updated Processes and SOPs (Goal Congruence)

With predictability and consistency as key goals, we moved beyond “form over substance” and updated our processes to reflect our true intentions. The new processes were streamlined and optimized which eliminated costly effort that our customers were not willing to pay for. Perhaps, the most significant contribution was the update of Standard Operating Procedures (“SOPS”). Improved operator training and accurate SOPs allowed us to reduce errors and produce product with high quality & purities and improved stability and consistency, which provided a roadmap for identifying issues in a real-time fashion so that immediate actions could be taken to rectify issues, delivering consistent results.

While harvesting low-hanging fruit is rewarding, true achievement comes to those that can stretch for the real treasure in the higher branches.

Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.” -Mark Cuban

ERP Helps You Achieve On-Time Delivery (OTD) KPI

If you are using spreadsheets to keep track of your supply chain, it’s time for you to switch to automation as manual processing is cumbersome and error prone, costing you millions. Deploying a modern ERP system can boost your supply chain efficiency: from better inventory control, to faster delivery of goods, to improved productivity.

A good modern-day ERP ensures stronger supplier relationships, streamlined shipping operations, and better customer communication through reliable lead, opportunity and quote tracking. The software offers fundamental benefits such as reduced lead-time, on-time shipments and reduction in cycle-time. Reduced lead-time is a critical parameter as non-availability of an item can create issues such as missing delivery schedule and losing customers to your competition.

The real-time data analytics helps you to better manage inventory levels and order fulfilment rates.

Per a global supply chain survey, data analytics will help grow DIFOT to 96% or above, which is at least 7% higher than the industry average.

Companies with a modern ERP get a 360-degree view of the customer. This holistic view of the customer relationships and their effectivity helps you to better serve customers. You can offer a tailored service to each customer, prioritize your best customers, and automate allocations, fulfillment and discounts for your “A” customers. Improved shipping operations give you the scope for reliable order tracking and shipping notifications.

ERP has really helped with a better distribution of information across the internal teams within our company.

Success Story

One of our clients, a US-based manufacturing company initiated an upgrade of their existing ERP software. The upgrade was imperative as the system was hurting overall profitability and enterprise-wise efficiencies. There was a lack of visibility of data, most communication was manual, inventory was all over the place, resources & human capital was untracked from a costing perspective etc. Within 6 months of upgrading their ERP system to a modern cloud-based system, their on-time delivery improved by 28% as the system was able to track each step of the operation with enhanced visibility of inventory and supply chain.

Key Takeaways

• Finally, most companies manage OTD not just as a single date but instead to a range of dates – missed (X) or expected (Y) dates.
• A structured operations meeting lead by a strong leader can do wonders to OTIF. Resolving operational issues at a micro level is essential.
• An effective ERP software solution helps drive efficiencies across the board.
• A metric that drives customer satisfaction will drive long-term customer retention and revenue for your organization.

At a Glance

• On-time delivery (OTD) is a key metric to measure delivery performance and supply chain efficiency in your organization.
• This article talks of a real-life transformation of OTD in a chemical company from 76% to 90%+.
• Your ‘A’ customers contribute to more than 70% of your company’s revenue and meeting their sales order demand is critical for customer retention.
• Improvement of OTD requires optimization of processes across multiple departments in the organization.
• Prime reasons behind late product delivery – lack of real-time data-driven insights, planning, monitoring, and operational efficiency.
• Technology and integrated tools play a pivotal role in the monitoring / increase of OTD.
• The OTD percentage is a holistic measure of operational performance.

On-time Delivery – Industry Disruptors

Amazon has been a major disruptor in the industry and changed consumer perception by delivering shipments within the promised 2 days. The operational efficiencies required to run Amazon’s distribution centers is no joke. Other retail giants have now been forced to follow suit and meet the high standards set by Amazon. The expectation of on-time delivery is now more than ever before in traditional industries such as chemical, pharmaceutical and distribution.

Here are a few KPIs that are critical to measure delivery performance in Logistics and Supply Chain operations –

• On-time Delivery (OTD) also referred to as On-time Performance (OTP), Shipped-on-Time (SOT) or Delivery on Time (DOT)
• DIF – Delivery in Full
• DIFOT – Delivery In Full on Time
• Inventory Turns (days)
• Costs as a percentage of sales

This article contains real-life experiences of a general manager and executive of a chemical company. We will discuss the key contributors to on-time delivery and how by starting with a low percentage of OTD you can achieve significant gains over time.

The realization

• You are responsible for managing operations and see some glaring issues. However, you are not able to pinpoint the precise problem or where to even start. You request Key Performance Indicator data (“KPI”) from different departments.
• As you begin your review, you notice a lack of focus – i.e., there are several KPIs, all being portrayed as having an equal value. One logistics KPI stands out: The On-time Delivery (“OTD”) percentage within the company is only 76%. Upon reflection, you realize efficiency can be enhanced by managing operations with this single measure.
• In this blog, we will elaborate why OTD is so important. This single KPI can drive tangible value for your customer and totally change how customers perceive you. Our next blog in the same series expands on the problem/opportunity you inherited, the steps you can take to produce rapid positive results and finally the result achieved.

What is OTD?

OTD is a metric used to assess the ability of a business in fulfilling the shipment order within the period of promised delivery date.

On-time Delivery (OTD) – The Logistics KPI Defined

The On-time delivery performance refers to the ratio of customer order lines shipped on or before the requested delivery date / customer promised date versus the total number of order lines. This is usually expressed as a percentage and can be calculated for several measurement periods.

What is required to Deliver On-time?

1. 1.You have forecasted estimated demand, ran MRP and ordered materials. You create a purchase order for the required materials.
2. 2.The materials are received, recorded and put into your raw material stores area.
3. 3.An order has been received, you check available inventory, determine that you can produce the order and promise your customer delivery on a specific date.
4. 4.You create a work order and issue it to production.
5. 5.The materials are correctly picked, moved to the production area and produced.
6. 6.Inventory is yielded and quality confirms that the produced inventory meets product specifications.
7. 7.Inventory is put-away to the finished good-storage location.
8. 8.Per customer promised date, inventory is picked and delivered to the shipping dock where proper shipping documentation is prepared. In chemical or pharmaceutical companies, shipping documentation typically includes other documentation such as Certificate of Analysis (COA), SDS etc.
9. 9.The delivery is scheduled, the truck arrives to take the finished goods away and the delivery arrives on-time and undamaged.
10. 10.You just executed the perfect On-time Delivery and, most importantly, your customer is happy that you met their expectations.

Why is OTD Important?

• On time delivery drives better collaboration with your customers, ensures reliability of delivery and most importantly customer loyalty.
• Customers expect you to meet the promised delivery date. It is important to set the right expectations with your customers and meet them. If you can’t meet your customer’s expectation and deliver on time then they will find a supplier who can.
• Consistent problems with on-time delivery will not only disrupt your business or result in loss of reputation but will also affect many other areas of a company’s supply chain and can irreparably damage customer relationship and long-term success.

How to deliver on time?

• Understand and track the late delivery reasons, analyse the various factors that contribute to late delivery and identify the root cause.
• After identifying the root cause and the issues in late delivery, prioritize the issues and focus on the actionable steps to success.
• Develop a plan and implement it.
• Monitor results and revise the plan accordingly.

Reasons for late deliveries

With that in mind, think about all the things that can go wrong. The occurrence of any one of the following errors will result in late delivery. Most companies use a Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) system to track and resolve customer complaints. If you are a pharmaceutical customer, the emphasis on quality is significantly higher therefore imperative to manage these inefficiencies a lot closer.

• Bad forecasts
• Sales over-promising
• Incorrect lead-times and safety stock levels
• Purchase order errors
• Supplier delays
• Inventory inaccuracy
• Receiving data entry and put-away errors
• Production picking errors
• Bad standard operating procedures (“SOPs”)
• Production operator errors
• Maintenance and equipment related issues
• Quality delays
• Product rejections
• Material handling put-away errors
• Shipping department picking and packing errors
• Shipping documentation inaccuracy
• Delivery scheduling and late pickup
• Damage in transit and late delivery, etc.
• Customer changing orders constantly without a proper procedure in place
• Customer’s inability to handle products received in full – This could be due to lack of storage space, personnel or any other intrinsic reasons etc.

The OTD percentage is a holistic measure of operational performance. It measures an organization’s ability to manage its supply chain in a predictable manner. If you live up to the promises you make, you create value for your customer.

Success Story 1

One of our clients, a US-based chemical firm lacked the inventory management software and barcode to line out its full inventory of warehouse and manufacturing facility. To provide an effective solution, Xcelpros designed a new bar code scanning technology for the company along with durable, custom labels to improve data capturing and enhance operational efficiency with an ‘integrated material requirement planning system’.

It took us three weeks to give a closure to the entire label installation process without causing any disruption to the live operational environment. We successfully lined-out the warehouse, and the results were great.

• Eliminating manual data transcription reduced the scope of error
• Automating the procedure helped to minimize the time in materials management
• Limiting the frequency of materials-related changes in the production schedule

The chemical company now functions at close to 95% on-time delivery, a 30% increase in operational efficiency—with a 20% reduction in inventory.

Success Story 2

We had to come up with a technological solution for arranging on-time delivery at multiple distribution centers for a client. Managing this complex grid of network to successfully manufacture and deliver the products on time demanded continuous monitoring of production facilities, logistics hubs and consolidation points.

We came up with a supply chain visibility model using advanced analytics to track the order status in the supply chain. We developed a dashboard and reorganized the orders with a clustering approach as per source, delivery destination, stock keeping units (SKUs) etc so that the status of the each individual product is tracked. Following this methodology gave our client a complete visibility on their product status and delivery performance. The real-time data generated better insight across the supply chain, and corrective measures were taken on an immediate basis to manage the impact of late delivery.

Figure 4 depicts the analysis of insufficient lead time given to the supplier. The root cause of this insufficient lead time is the delay and long-stretched process – from the material requirement planning (MRP) to purchase request (PR), to purchase order (PO).

Figure 5 analyzes the key reasons behind supplier delay, which need to be addressed. It pinpoints “no tracking control” to be the prime reason that causes supplier delay.

One of the major concerns here is how to keep a track of MRP-PO-PR conversion if you don’t have any component for tracking control. This lack of monitoring brings operational inefficiency due to which there has been a gap between the agreed time and the actual time of delivering the components. They are found to be the major bottlenecks in achieving OTR and thus OTD.

The solution is to develop and design a lean live tracking (LLT) system for the ease of monitoring with very low manual intervention. It aids to bridge the gap between PO releases to suppliers and production completion.

Focus on what matters!

Why you should care about your business processes?So, having determined that the On-time Delivery (“OTD”) KPI is the best holistic operational performance measure, I needed to understand how it was possible that we were only satisfying customers only 76% of the time. I conducted a detailed review of every major supply chain and operational process within the company. I found that were quite a few systems and business processes that were inefficient and needed improvement.

Areas that Needed Improvement

• Over promise by sales team on delivery time – Our problems started with sales promising customers a delivery date without any conversation with the Customer Service department. Sales and Operations teams struggled to meet the demand dates leading to a ripple effect downstream. Lack of clear policies and standard lead-times for both make-to-stock (MTS) and make-to-order (MTO) products was the first domino to fall.
• Training – Poor training served to maintain our ISO certification, but was more formed than substance, and it caused issues in virtually every functional area of our business. An emphasis on training is critical for Organization’s success and its most effective when imparted on the job.
• Standard Operating Procedures (“SOPs”) – Outdated and incorrect SOPs resulted in inconsistent management of inventory and transactional errors. In fact, incorrect SOPs resulted in higher levels of scrap and out-of-spec products that were being rejected by the quality department. The process to main
• Communication – The lack of communication with shipping department led to shipping document inaccuracy, late pickup and packing errors. And negligence of shipping department further led to damage in transit.
• Transparency in process – Moreover, the lack of visibility to downtime and other operational delays further negatively impacted our ability to deliver on-time. These shortcomings drove a lack of consistency, repeatability and predictability.

Little Faith in Company’s Material Requirements Planning System – Lack of a sophisticated ERP

• A failure to maintain proper and timely planning parameters (lead times and safety stock levels) coupled with inaccurate sales forecasts resulted in production planning and procurement managers abandoning the company’s Material Requirements Planning (“MRP”) system and instead managing operations using “Tribal Knowledge” and gut instincts.
• Managing chemical operations using spreadsheets and gut instincts lead to other problems. The procurement manager approved purchase requests to buy material significantly in excess of what is required to meet the demand. This lead to a huge amount of capital being stuck due to this excess inventory.
• This same mentality existed in the production department, where rather than relying on SOPs, products were being manufactured from memory which led to production errors, inventory inaccuracy, poor quality and product rejections.
• This, of course, resulted in operators marching to the beat of their own drum and many variations in the products being delivered to quality for review.

Lack of Communication Between Associates

• When I considered the lack of well-defined business processes and faith in our systems, I began to believe that 76% On-time Delivery wasn’t bad – How did we deliver anything on-time?
• It seemed like every order had a problem, causing a late delivery and an investigation always resulted in some culprit who was responsible for acting on their own and making assumptions, rather than following a prescribed, repeatable and consistent process.
• This promoted an environment that lacked trust, promoted finger-pointing and made it hard to communicate and act like a team.

Considering Root Cause Analysis (RCA) as a critical factor

• Whenever a failure or deviation occurs, there should be a proper infrastructure in place so that RCA can be done efficiently in an optimal duration.
• There should be a way to backtrack how the incident happened and capture the information i.e. in case of hardware failure there should be logs, archives, backups. There should be a way to capture and backtrack all business metrics responsible for the incident. Like a plane crash investigation, we should be able to backtrack and find what happened before seconds to disaster.

These are just a few opportunities that need improvement. Most of these can be addressed by virtue of a system / technology that connects the business processes within various departments / functions in the company.

Continued in Part 2..