Category: Supply Chain Trends and Insights
Why Supply Chain Transformations Fail
Introduction Supply Chain transformations fail because of poor planning. That's the most succinct and oversimplified way to put it. Historically in large and small companies, change and transformation were viewed as a periodic event. In many cases, businesses did not place a special focus or dedicate resources to manage the change as a structured event. Instead, they would muscle in and reactively deal with the impacts, issues, and challenges. In a few companies, an effort was made to intentionally deal with the change, invest in resources and skill sets to do it well. For those companies, the chance of [...]
Contract Staffing on the Rise in Supply Chains
Introduction Contract staffing offers the dynamic world of supply chain management solutions to problems that these organizations regularly struggle to solve by optimizing workforces to meet fluctuating consumer demands and disruptions. When you add in rapid technological advances and the need to quickly build capacity to handle these obstacles, rapid hiring practices become in-demand. Supply chain contract staffing emerges as a powerful solution to address these challenges efficiently. Understanding Supply Chain Talent Needs Supply chain contract staffing involves hiring temporary professionals on a contractual basis to fulfill specific roles and responsibilities within the supply chain function. These contract staff [...]
Successful Change Management in Supply Chain is about Process & People
Successful change management and organizational transformation depends largely on procuring buy-in from each level of the organization.
Future of Supply Chain Work: Gig Economy
The future of supply chain work is going to involve the gig economy as a means for employers to build capacity and engage in much needed change management and guided transformations.
Co Sourcing Partners Impact Outcomes and Profitability
By Chris Gaffney and Karen Bird Find the Right Co-Sourcing Partner Building capability in your supply chain used to be a bright-line distinction: Either you did it yourself or you hired someone else to handle it entirely. In-sourcing versus outsourcing, all or nothing, whether you were looking at planning, execution, or even the physical work of supply chain operations. Today's complex and ever-shifting environment, though, requires a more nuanced and flexible approach that can deliver both agility and deep expertise at different levels, depending on the situation: Co-Sourcing. Co-sourcing is an intentional blending of sorts: It's the shared delivery [...]
Diversity in Supply Chain – (DEI) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Supply Chains
Managing diversity in your company’s supply chain workforce can be challenging. However, the overall benefits of a diverse workforce improve your company’s worth. In business, the bottom line indicates the health and growth of a company. Most return on investment (ROI) numbers can be calculated fairly easily, but there are some intangibles that improve ROI and aren’t so easy to correlate. One such “intangible” is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in a company’s workforce. In this article, we make a case for actively pursuing DEI (sometimes called just D&I for Diversity and Inclusion), in supply chains and business. Multiple guests on the Supply Chain Careers Podcast have emphasized how diverse backgrounds and viewpoints positively enhance the ability for supply [...]
Trends Affecting the Food and Beverage Supply Chain
Quiet Bridge Burning could be the next hot trend in the employment market. Talent professionals have been experiencing a sharp rise in candidates who are accepting lucrative job offers, only to back out at the last minute.
Will Tech Layoffs Benefit Supply Chains?
Large scale tech layoffs could lead to a solution to the supply chain talent shortage. Companies like Meta, Tesla, Coinbase, Robinhood, google, Microsoft and Amazon hacked portions of their workforce in efforts to address what many believe to be an economic downturn coming down the pike. A lot of these job losses were in the technology and software sector. It is estimated that 200,000 tech employees have been laid off in reduction of force measures since the beginning of 2022. Meanwhile, supply chain organizations suffer from the opposite problem: not enough talent to handle a rapidly accelerating technology base. [...]
What to Expect When Working with a Supply Chain Recruiter
The time may come sometime in the near future for you to make a very important hire. That effort could best be left up to professionals who specialize in the specific duty of sourcing and placing candidates well qualified for the role you’re seeking to fill. Here are just a few things to expect when working with a recruiter. Working with a supply chain recruiter brings along with it some very unique duties and expectations which may not be familiar with people who haven’t engaged in this type of work before. Here’s a bit of a primer on what [...]
State of the Supply Chain Job Market: Labor Hoarding and Co-Sourcing
The supply chain labor market has been going through volatile changes and disruptions. Staffing has been a challenge at the front line and in professional ranks for the past two plus years. In the last six months, there have been signs that economic activity is slowing. Some spaces, including technology, have seen the beginnings of layoffs. This is what we would expect given history. To date, this type of activity has been less prevalent in Supply Chain jobs. So what is different about jobs in Supply Chain and will we see this continue? Supply Chain leaders are using different approaches and we will discuss a few of them. One such shifting dynamic is labor hoarding - an age-old term used to describe the retention of a company’s labor base during down economic times.
