Supply Chain Update - The Role of Integration in the Quest for Resilient Supply Chains and Businesses

The Role of Integration in the Quest for Resilient Supply Chains and Businesses

Everything counts in large amounts

Supply chain integration across all departments is the key to resilient supply chains which, in turn, lead to more resilient businesses. “Businesses don’t just become resilient by themselves,” says SAPICS President Cobus Rossouw, fresh from last week’s annual SAPICS Supply Chain conference held at Sun City. The conference was attended by close to 1000 supply chain participants from Africa and the world’s major business centres.

“Until each part of the business - including the guys from research and development , sales and finance - understand how they fit into the supply chain and the fact that their contribution matters to its overall resilience, companies simply won’t achieve the level of resilience required for them to be truly competitive in today’s fast-changing, demanding marketplace,” he adds.

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. “We’re not saying: the better you plan, the easier it’ll be to avoid trouble. We’re saying, difficulties are unpredictable and unavoidable, but the better you plan, the faster you’ll recover.”

Another key discussion point raised during the conference is the perception that the supply chain profession is being tainted by the criticism against the role of procurement. “The casual interchange of the terms procurement, supply management and supply chain management is compromising the ability of our value chain integration profession to deliver maximum business value. This dilemma extends into the private sector as well, where buyers continue to focus on price as the major decision-driver, often to the detriment of the integrated supply chain. This inevitably has a disastrous effect on supply chain relationships.”

The role of relationships in resilience
In his experience, Rossouw says recovering from difficulties requires collaboration and innovation from all parties involved. “Collaboration seems so easy at the outset but, in the end, it requires parties to accept that ‘being right’ is less important than ‘being aligned’. “ Innovation that leads to greater resilience requires an open mind and the desire to be brave.

“I have learnt that all supply chains and all relationships are exposed to difficulties. Plain-sailing is only a figment of your imagination or a lack of drive to seek out the next opportunity for improvement. This means that we need to be resilient, to recover from these difficulties quickly. Whether difficulties are forced upon us by circumstances outside our control or emanating from our drive to deliver more value, we have to be tough,” he says.

“This will require collaboration and innovation,” Rossouw concludes. “It will require us to be aligned with all our partners and to seek out different ways to succeed.”