[The Jolt] Recession-busting tip: Be flexible

Global - Supply chain executives must be flexible and take on new roles and responsibilities if they intend to emerge from this recession unscathed.

IBM did a global chief supply chain officer study recently to find out exactly how supply chain executives are coping.

IBM said the future of supply chain will be instrumented, with information previously created by people will increasingly be machine generated. Supply chains of the future will also be interconnected as extensive connectivity will enable worldwide networks of supply chains to plan and collaborate on decision making. Additionally, they will be intelligent, making use to advanced analytics and modelling will help decision makers evaluate alternatives against complex and dynamic set of risks and constraints.

This implies that supply chain executives will have to take on different roles and set of responsibilities such as strategic thinkers, collaborators and orchestrators who optimise complex networks of global capabilities to create smarter supply chains in the future, the survey said.

"As they re-evaluate current supply chain strategies and initiatives, executives should ask: Which investments are simply making processes faster or more efficient and which go a step further - making the supply chain decidedly more intelligent and resilient in times of unprecedented instability and risk," said the survey.

The participants said they are increasingly having a hard time responding to challenges as supply chains are becoming more complex, costly and vulnerable. Conventional supply chain strategies and designs are also no longer sufficient to build an efficient supply chain that is demand driven or even transparent.

The survey participants included 400 senior executives from North America, Western Europe and the Asia Pacific region responsible for the organisations of their supply chain strategies and operations.