Supply-Chain Council, APQC, IBM aim to standardize supply chain metrics

Manufacturing News, Source : The Manufacturer US
Zone : Logistics and supply chain
Published : 26 Jan 2007 13:22

How do you measure supply chain success? That depends on a whole passel of subjective judgments, including the patience of the procurement officer: one may shrug at a late delivery, while another demands a rolling head from its supplier. The Supply Chain Council is attempting to create objective and standardized measures, which it detailed in this release.

"The Supply-Chain Council (SCC) has announced a new member benefit through an alliance with APQC, a leading global resource for best practices and benchmarking. With this new alliance, it is now easier for companies around the world to compare and contrast their supply chains using the same metrics.

"The benchmarking portal will launch at Supply-Chain World in Philadelphia, PA on March 19, 2007.Supply-Chain Council member organizations implementing the SCOR Model will have access to a no-cost benchmarking portal on SCOR-Model metrics that provides them one resource to establish performance metrics directly tied to the SCOR model.

"The effort is supported by the Open Standards Benchmarking CollaborativeSM research, which was formed by APQC, IBM, and dozens of other firms in support of open standards for performance metrics.

APQC will serve as a confidential, third-party repository for SCC members and will collect, validate, and report benchmarking data, as well as provide analysis, insight, and best practices information. Members will receive a benchmarking report that will align their performance improvement plans as they move through a SCOR implementation, begin a new Lean or Six Sigma project, or conduct annual assessments of company performance for trending.

“Benchmarking is key for supply-chain performance improvement,” said SCC Board Chair Thomas Phelps. “By teaming up with APQC and IBM, our members can set corporate strategy and accurately analyze performance gaps more efficiently and more cost effectively.”

"Participating Supply-Chain Council members will be able to select the metrics most critical to their organizations, such as reliability, responsiveness, flexibility, and cost or asset management. Companies can ascertain what their target performance is in any given area, for example by charting time to market. The resulting report is a diagnostic assessment enabling an organization to quickly see the gap between where they are and where they seek to be. In addition, the report brings deeper insights by presenting results in an aggregate view, as well as along multiple dimensions such as by revenue, industry, geography, or primary supply chain activity.

“SCC members will have access to data and information that has traditionally cost tens of thousands of dollars. With the easy-to-use online portal, organizations are able to dramatically shorten the benchmarking cycle time by weeks so that they have the information in hand to begin improving their performance,” said Lisa Higgins, chief operating officer for APQC.

“To make timely, well-informed decisions everyone must have a window into the operational health of their business,” says Enrique Carrillo, Supply-Chain Council vice chair. “Effective benchmarking and decision-support tools are a must for any company; they proactively monitor trends that are currently providing an early warning of any constraints and excesses in the real-time supply chain.”

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