We again remind our readers that on April 2nd thru the 4th, the Supply Chain Council (SCC) is conducting its annual Supply Chain North America 2012 Conference being held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Miami Florida.

This year’s conference has as its overall theme: A Shift to Integrative Thinking, and will include sessions that address needs in the areas of customer delight, supply chain operational excellence, people and talent, and the need for resilience. Last year’s conference garnered highly positive feedback from attendees and this year’s event has similar potential.

The lineup of speakers includes timely keynotes from Donald Wirth, Vice President, Global Operations-Corporate Supply Chain at DuPont, and Steven A. Melnyk, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University. Other conference speakers include senior supply chain managers representing Anheuser Busch Inbev, Avnet, Inc., Cienna Communications, Dell, Land O’Lakes, and SAP, among others. This conference is designed to be a more intimate session with lots of opportunities to network with both your fellow supply chain management professionals and the presenters’.

I’m delighted to announce that I will once again be moderating the Pundits and Influencers panel discussion which is scheduled on Wednesday, the final day of the conference.  This will be my second year of panel moderation for the annual conference.  The panel itself is designed to provide attendees the latest perspectives of upcoming business, process and technology trends impacting global supply chains.  We broadened the format last year to provide the audience with more diverse perspectives, hence the name changed from the traditional industry analyst panel to an influencer’s panel.  The change was well received by last year’s audience.

Panelists confirmed include:

Steven A. Melnyk, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management, Michigan State University

Roddy Martin, Senior Vice President, Global Supply Chain Practice, Competitive Capabilities International (Former Vice President at AMR Research/Gartner)

Matthew Davis, Research Director, Supply Chain, Gartner Inc.

Bob Parker, Group Vice President, IDC Manufacturing Insights and IDC Retail Insights

Yours truly as moderator and facilitator

My goal as moderator is to have the panel discuss and interact on current top-of-mind topics including what integrative supply chain capabilities equate to, the impact of a rather tumultuous 2011 and 2012 across global supply chains.

More detailed information regarding the conference, including detailed agenda and registration information, can be accessed by clicking on the conference graphic located on our Conferences panel on the right-hand side.

Please consider joining me at Supply Chain World North America this coming April.

Bob Ferrari, Founder and Executive Editor

We were catching-up on reading this week and reviewed an article published in CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly printed magazine. (paid subscription or CSCMP professional membership required).  The article was titled, Tap into the power of analytics, and was jointly authored by Thomas H. Davenport, distinguished professor of IT and management at Babson College, and Jerry O’Dwyer, a principle and leader of analytics strategy for the strategy and operations practice at Deloitte Consulting LLP.

I remain a strong fan of professor Davenport’s research in the area of supply chain and business analytics.

The article itself explored new ways of applying supply chain analytics to business performance needs and where to find the best opportunities.  One of the most important insights brought out in this article reflected on the need for improving analytical “literacy” across supply chain teams.  We have heard and read of this same need coming-up more frequently among senior supply chain management teams and wanted to enhance this challenge through this commentary.

In their article, the authors make the observation that several companies have had to considerably upgrade their analytical capabilities of both their IT applications and in the skills of business planning teams.  A quote from one supply chain manager observes that people have to be twice as smart in order to make best leverage of today’s more sophisticated technologies in analytics. Further noted is that individuals need to be either retrained or perhaps moved to other opportunities.  Some companies are providing for in-house sponsored training while outside universities or training organizations are offering new opportunities for deeper analytical skills.

One other concept brought out by the authors to facilitate the understanding of supply chain analytical skills was simpler software applications with narrow functionality. The analogy brought forward is that of a “smartphone-like app” that would support a single decision, and further noted is that some software providers are now beginning to introduce such narrow applications. Examples mentioned are supplier evaluation, inventory performance analysis or transportation analytics.  The authors point out that the way to guarantee the use of analytics in supply chain management is to embed them into supply chain-oriented processes and systems.

Supply Chain Matters would not necessarily agree with the first approach, namely because it places analytics and business intelligence data back into functional stovepipes, rather than into a supply-chain wide information and intelligence repository.  These narrow scope analytics applications may also be the means of some software providers to hang on to customers while not necessarily supporting the broader and more extensive need.  The latter, in our view, reflects the emerging concepts of supply chain control tower like applications or platforms, which we addressed in prediction five of our Supply Chain Matters 2012 Predictions for Global Supply Chains.

Regardless of the systems and technology approach, the reality remains that both supply chain management and planning teams need to consider realistic methods for  deepening individual skills and literacy into leveraging advanced analytics within supply chain business decisions.

We encourage readers to share their own views regarding the growing need for supply chain analytical skills by either adding a Comment to this posting, or responding to our interactive poll question appearing in the right-hand panel. Depending on the volume of responses, we will share the results in an updated commentary.

Bob Ferrari