False Measures Of Supply Chain Success

We spend entirely too much time focused on the minutiae of supply chain performance, and most of the metrics involved are useless on a good day, and misleading when a lunatic OCD accountant is at the wheel of the bus.

So, we asiduously measure and report such trivia as transportation cost, inventory turns, headcount, supply chain cost as a per cent of revenue, and so on . . .

We have no clue as to the importance of supply chain investment and performance in such needle-moving outcomes as: customer retention, increnental sales, competitive position, profit margins, capital investment, return on assets (ROA), and return on equity (ROE).  Shame on us, operating in the murky dark of cost managment left iover from the last century, and blissfully unaware of that makes organizations succeed in an enlightened new century.

Always-astute Jeff Berman has seen through this twisted performance mis-fire; we need more like him to energize our collective understanding of failure, success, and watching the wring ball that characterizes too much of what we pay close attention to.