DC Velocity - April 2012

sically motivated I am to work with this person or to work with this company.

The last part of that is satisfaction. What will that relationship bring to me? Is it working both in your favor and in my favor? We use answers to questions like that to measure what we think of as supply chain engagement.

QCan you point to any companies that haveadopted this approach? AYes. There are several companies I work with that have done a couple of really effective things in this area. One of the things they’ve done is develop balanced scorecards that include not just hard metrics but also some soft metrics— metrics such as customer retention, employee retention, and employee engagement. The idea of employee surveys and employee engagement has really taken off over the last 10 years.

It’s important to note that they’re holding their managers accountable not just for hitting the hard metrics but those soft ones too.

QI expect this doesn’t happen overnight—that it takes a bit of time and patience for this kind of thinking to become ingrained in the culture? ADefinitely. You have to remember that for the last 15 years, we have been intensely focused on designing the human factor out of the supply chain. So to put that back in the supply chain takes a cultural shift.

QWhat advice would you offer a com- pany that’s interested in exploring the “soft skills” approach?

AA good place to start might be with collaborative education. It’s about teaching each other about our own companies. Bringing all the players in an entire supply chain together in a room. It’s about helping everyone get a deeper understanding of how what they do in their piece of the supply chain impacts the entire group, both upstream and downstream.

It’s important to understand what really impacts the long-term effectiveness of the supply chain and a hint here: It is not always just technology. It is not always just process. It is the people. ;

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