DC Velocity - November 2014

likely and frequent adjuncts to the highest and best use of juniper berries.

THE CASE FOR RISK MITIGATION

It is all too easy to recommend forward planning against untoward, and often remote, possibilities.

We, cooling our brows with icy bottles of England’s finest, plan for prevention and recovery after thinking the unthinkable. And that’s cool, as far as it goes. But what happens when the chief financial officer (CFO) tells us we can’t possibly afford the mitigations envisioned, that we’ll have to take our chances that the impossible won’t become real? Gin for dinner—and just when we thought we would not need to seek that remedy any longer.

Maybe there is some encouragement, though. Maybe we’ll make enough mitigation progress that we can lay off the hard stuff on most evenings. One may only hope …

AND THEN?

But it seems there is always something that brings challenge
to our world. Even when we do what we can in the realm
of execution, high-level planning and C-level relationships
can tempt us to seek refuge in mood-altering concoctions.
Contemplate what can happen when we do our best to
lead and facilitate sales and operations planning (S&OP)
for the enterprise, and alignment proves to be elusive.
The sales and marketing organization is sticking to its
parallel-universe volume projections. The
CFO flatly refuses to approve a budget that
supports even a realistic version of what sales
and marketing want. And the C-level officers
form a united front against our asset rede-
ployment recommendations that will meet
demand projections and customer desires at
an optimal balance point of investment and
profitability.

To paraphrase Kermit the Frog, it isn’t easy being supply chain management (let alone green). Where we have the advantage over Kermit is that we can drink from glasses or bottles or cans. And no one needs to know exactly what we had for dinner.

44 DC VELOCITY NOVEMBER 2014 www.dcvelocity.com b as ict ra i n i n g

Art van Bodegraven may be reached at (614) 893-9414 or avan@columbus.rr.com.

You can read his blog at http://blogs.dcvelocity.com/the_art_of_art/. Kenneth B. Ackerman, president of The Ackerman Company, can be reached at (614) 488-3165 or ken@warehousing-forum.com.