Supply Chain Transformation: Building and Executing an Integrated Supply Chain Strategy

CHAPTER 2Start with Your Customers

Where should supply chain strategy development start? Should you start with your suppliers and work logically forward through the supply chain, just as material physically flows through it? Or should you start with your customers’ needs and work backward? The question may seem trivial, but in fact it is extremely important. Where you start drives everything in the strategy development process. It sets the tone and creates the focus for the supply chain strategy. To illustrate, let’s review the two basic approaches to the flow of strategy development.

TWO BASIC APPROACHES

Approach A

In Approach A, the supplier forward approach, start with your suppliers’ capabilities and move forward following the five steps ...