of your organization to get people to go places they never
imagined possible.
QWhat have you found to be the key differences between managing a consumer goods supply chain
and a health-care supply chain?
A For me, a supply chain is a supply chain. The vernacu- lar is very similar, the principles are similar. The biggest
difference is where an industry is when it comes to recognizing the role the supply chain can play in driving business
performance. In consumer goods and other industries,
we’ve identified the supply chain as a key enabler to driving
business results. Health care is at a different place on the
continuum. Most health-care providers came into existence
to take care of patients first and were thrown into the business side of health care second. As a result, the industry as a
whole is working to adopt best practices from the consumer
products and other industries in order to leverage the supply chain to drive efficiencies and performance.
QYou advocate that supply chain professionals become more engaged in communicating with business leadership. Why is it important, and how can supply chain professionals accomplish that?
A Often, supply chain folks report through the manufac- turing organization of a company and are seen as a
“cost and inventory reduction” organization. Leading-edge
companies, however, have elevated the role of the supply
chain leader to the CEO’s table. These companies recognize
that supply chain capability can lead to competitive advantage, driving both revenue and margin improvements. As a
supply chain leader, that is our challenge—articulating
opportunities in language that top management understands so we can get a seat at the table in order to drive
improvements. For example, being able to discuss how
issues impact margin, earnings, or the customer experience
and not just cost or inventory. Given the increased globalization of business, it is even more important now than ever
before that the supply chain organization has a voice at the
CEO’s table.
QWhat’s next on your agenda?
A The biggest thing is working with our partners upstream and downstream to think differently about
the health-care supply chain in order to improve overall
efficiency and effectiveness. We will do this by looking collectively at how the extended supply chain performs today
and identifying opportunities to work differently to
improve performance. It is a big cultural change for the
industry and will require a level of trust and collaboration
that has been missing to date.
Timothy Feemster
TIMOTHY FEEMSTER HAS HAD A TRULY
varied career: He’s been a senior manager in
three manufacturing companies, a consultant, and an executive at two third-party
logistics service providers. Currently, he is
senior vice president at the real estate firm
Grubb & Ellis Co., serving as the national
director of global logistics. He has direct
experience in scores of warehouse layout
and logistics systems design and implementation initiatives as well as with strategic
planning, carrier rationalization, supply chain network
analysis, and 3PL selection projects.
Feemster also finds time for involvement in professional
organizations, most actively with the Warehousing
Education and Research Council (WERC), where he is a
past president and currently serves as a member of the
board of directors.
QWhat do you consider to be your greatest accom- plishment to date in the logistics field?
A I really have two. In the early ’70s, I participated as a representative of The Pillsbury Co. to the Grocery
Manufacturers Association and was on the committee that
developed the first bar-coding system used in
the retail trade. We, along with consultants,
put together the bar-code RFP to the indus-
try, analyzed the responses, and developed
the bar code we all see today on our con-
sumer packaged goods and grocery items, the
Universal Product Code (UPC). This
advancement completely changed the way
commerce took place in the grocery and con-
sumer packaged goods industries. Once it
was fully implemented, bar coding eliminat-
ed the need to hand price every item in the store. It also led
to better inventory management by retailers, by providing
them with accurate store sales data by SKU and other types
of real-time information.
