Supply Chain Management Best Practices, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 6Manufacturing: Supply Chain on the Make

Flashpoints

• Supply chain management begins with breaking down the silo mentality.
• Continuous improvement practices like lean and Six Sigma need to be tied in tightly with a company's supply chain processes.
• The promise of digital technologies lies in their ability to connect manufacturers more closely to their customers.
• Top supply chains consistently design and develop products their customers want to buy.

One of the major objectives of supply chain management is to break down the silos that operate within any company. The term silo refers to the silhouetted portrait of a typical manufacturer: smoke-belching chimneys towering over several-stories-tall factories situated near tall office buildings. Every school kid recognizes that picture, and it's become the default icon for every PowerPoint presentation that needs an instantly recognizable image of a production facility. Unfortunately, it's not just the silo image that lingers in the public consciousness—it's the entire silo mentality that supply chain proponents keep trying to break down, with varying degrees of success.

Let's face it: Taking control of the supply chain and aligning a company's processes so that improvements are regular and long-lasting are very difficult tasks to accomplish. For some companies, though, an even harder task is deciding whether to bother trying to overcome the silo mentality at all, particularly given the long tradition of “throwing ...