Lessons From Supply Chain Disasters

June 25, 2009 from Supply Chain Digest – “…it is striking that all of our most recent disasters on the list had little or nothing to do with technology problems. They were all problems resulting from failures of strategy or execution. Technology meltdowns are simply much less likely today…”

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – In this follow up to an article published on May 7, 2009 in Supply Chain Digest entitled The Top Supply Chain Disasters of All Time, Dan Gilmore writes about the following eight key lessons that can be learned:

1. “Big Bang” go lives are risky business
2. Being a pioneer often leads to arrows in the back
3. Do not ignore early warning signs
4. Avoid hard cut-offs/transitions
5. Get some outside perspective
6. Beware of the ROI trap
7. Be brutally honest about your skill sets
8. Limit the number of moving parts

While the companies mentioned in the May 7, 2009 article are all large enterprises, the eight mistakes listed above are often relevant to companies of all sizes that are embarking on the implementation of new supply chain software.

Dan’s message is that many of the top supply chain disasters could have been avoided, or at least minimized through damage control, by applying the above eight lessons in a timely fashion.
Our decades of experience has taught us that implementing business software is indeed tricky business-lots of unknowns and certainly some issues that are substantially out of one’s control. However, the same experience has proven time and time again that most implementation problems are substantially if not totally avoidable if one simply develops and monitors a well-conceived implementation plan that takes into consideration, among other things, the above eight lessons.

Costly and painful problems can often be avoided by simply asking the chosen vendor the right questions at the right time. For example, extreme caution is well advised for any company who is considering being the ‘guinea pig’. And as the article states:

Step one is first understanding whether or not you are that guinea pig, which sometimes, in software at least, isn’t always so easy. A long time software executive once told me: “Every new version of software has a “beta” customer [the first company to implement the software]. The question is whether they know it or not.”