Context & Goal
Supply chain has many large components (e.g. inventory, transportation, manufacturing), can differ between industries (e.g. perishable food vs apparel), and differs between stage (raw materials vs manufacturing vs retail).
We need to find out the general area in this map where the most important problems are and where we can expect to increase our chance of finding good ideas.
So, we decide which part of the map to start with?
Our starting map is of the people that report to Chief Supply Chain Officer”
How to find an area to explore
The Map
| Function |
Supply Chain Analytics / planning / forecasting |
Manufacturing |
Buying/Sourcing |
Order management / Procurement |
Logistics/Transportation |
Inventory/Fulfilment or Dist Centres |
Shipping & Reverse logistics |
International trade & compliance |
| Apparel |
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| Grocery |
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| Home & personal |
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| Automotive |
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| Medical |
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| Industrial (Chemical, agriculture, metals) |
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| Consumer electronics |
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Which function could be the best entry point?
- definitely reports to CSCO
- Warehouse/Inventory?
- Logistics?
- freight, first mile, middle mile
- Not referring to last mile
- Sourcing?
- may report to CSCO
- Ordering management / Procurement?
- Planning?
- do not report to CSCO
- Factors to consider
- which function is underserved or has the least # of solutions
- where do most issues occur: logistics, warehouse
- consumes most time, money, resources
- size of the team (bigger teams = more important?):
- causes the most loss of revenue: logistics, warehouse, sourcing
- where can we learn the fastest? (conversations, see/do the job):
- most tech-driven/tech-aware/tech-enabled persona or demographic: logistics
Which industry could be the best entry point?
- Automotive
- Retail
- Apparel (softline)
- Groceries
- Restaurants
- health & beauty
- hardline (e.g. sports goods)
- consumer durables/ Household consumables
- tools