The value of supply chain intelligence coming from street level knowledge is a recurring theme that people are struggling to understand. The military is a good case study of how one can start to think about this phenomenon. I recently interviewed a former Marine who served in Iraq, who described some of the activities regarding logistics intelligence and demand planning.
“We do a good job of reporting what we have on hand every day. As a company commander we developed a logistics status report This was in a military standardized nine line format where each unit has a logistics report that includes bandages, batteries, and all different classes of material. Your war fighter on the ground at the company level sends up a report with water, chow, ammunition on hand and that goes up to the battalion and up to a depot level. There is also a report that is produced that shows how many bullets during combat operations per marine are required and the standard amount for each piece of equipment, and this is compared against the actual onhand inventory. This goes up to regimental brigade and briefed to the commander at every level. And every commander knows at any point when any company is within 2 days of being out of supplies. In a counter insurgency environment this allows a pipeline to be established in theater when supplies are hitting these units at major points in time and when disruptions occur, the battalion has plans to convoy it at all times.
Although not as dramatic, how can organizations develop the same level of visibility and insight at the supply and customer level? Any responses or ideas from readers would be welcome. I believe this ability to communicate and coordinate using other forms of media besides planning systems, but also exploiting social media and other forums will become more important in the future.
Malcolm
September 1, 2011 @ 7:10 amTrying to wrap my head around this… the company/ industry that I am in… I am not sure how this will work yet. I work for an urban/ hip hop clothing online retailer. We don’t deal with a ton of on-going product. It is all about the new stuff and the speed by which we can get it from vendor to the shelf to the website for it to get picked & out to the customer. Speed & newness of product is key.
The company that I just left [hard to find computer parts & cables]… now this makes much sense and they do this some. We only deal with 5 or so HUGE distributors and web orders… and so input from them as to what is selling, not selling, what is on hand, what product are they using/ selling all dictates their weekly on-going orders and if there is a need for priority orders or not. The company was dependent upon their respective teams to provide info [intel] as to what is needed. Same thing with their other two warehouses in Canada & UK. Supply chain monitored levels on what was selling the most of and the DC in the US would send what was needed. Many times, if there was a big sell on certain items, then we would send via air a shipment to the UK to respond to that need.
One way that my current company could watch social media & other forms of Internet traffic is to watch for new & hot selling products being talked about on Twitter, FB, Google+, etc. and have such a relationship with the vendors where we can order more on a priority basis to meet the rising need that is seen on social media.
Does this make sense? Am I getting what you are talking about?