Miss Lucy Had a Baby

The Q1 issue of CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly (www.supplychainquarterly.com) features an article, Time for a checkup?, that suggests a thorough supply chain examination might uncover logistics cost reduction possibilities of ten to twenty per cent.

The approach proposed is well-thought-out, well-structured, comprehensive, and useful.  And, yet, I couldn't shake the lyrics of a children's song, "Miss Lucy called the doctor, Miss Lucy called the nurse . . ."

My challenge with the piece is that the program appears to contemplate a more-or-less static and self-contained system, with singular control and direction.  Some mention is made of variable service levels for different products, customers, and/or markets, and one illustration includes a cryptic note about "trucking and other service providers."

Ultimately, my contention is that optimizing one element of an end-to-end supply chain, without the involvement - and collaboration - of other players in the chain, risks sub-optimizing the whole.  Not to mention that it fails to leverage the knowledge and experience of all partners in the chain.

The authors, Dr. Timm Gudhus, a consultant from Hamburg, and Dr. Herbert Kotzab, a professor at the respected Copenhagen Business School, do allow that "there continues to be a gap between logistics theory and business practice."  It is possible that, in some dimensions, business practice might be out in front of theory.  My hypothesis might be that the audit process described could be orders-of-magnitude more effective if greater weight were to be given to the integration and relationships among supply chain partners, rather than being limited to the mechanics of product flow.

Okay, we've heard from the doctor(s) and we've heard from the nurse.  I've no clue what we might hear from the lady with the alligator purse.