Supply Chain Metrics that Matter

Chapter 5What Drives Value in the Value Network?Industry Progress in Consumer Value Chains

The brisk spring breeze made me grab my coat as I left my car. The team had come a long way on Project Orbit since our last meeting. Progress on the project was in full swing. The groups running the horizontal processes were maturing, and Edgar was feeling good about their progress. I had been in touch by phone with most of the team during the past three months, but today was our first face-to-face meeting since the strategy session in the winter.

It had now been 14 months since I first met Joe. I grinned as I thought about his efforts to unveil his big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) on inventory at his kick-off meeting last year. Joe would often laugh with me about how much he had learned on the journey of championing Project Orbit. He was a bit embarrassed when thinking of his naivety a year ago, but he was also proud of how far he had come in his understanding of the Metrics That Matter.

The goal of the meeting on this beautiful spring day was to understand how other companies had progressed over the course of the past decade on improving value in their value chains. The team wanted to know what was possible. They also wanted to understand how quickly they could drive progress. They understood that leaders focused disciplined efforts on small, incremental improvements over many years.

The Questions

We were meeting together to work on Project Orbit for the first time in three months. As ...