Business at Speed of Light
Speed kills...supply chain lessons from the war on Iraq 供应链管理Two Pentagon officials wrote an article on lessons learned from military logistics in November 2003 Harvard Business Review. Basically the military logisticians have adopted a new paradigm in moving supplies to the battlefield. The old doctrine is to move necessary materials ahead of the troops, in anticipation and preparation of large scale military operations (孙子：三军未动，粮草先行). However, it is not what today's warfares call for. Gone are the days when two armies fight face-to-face en masse; Today's military conflicts involve regular armies fighting invisible enemies mixed with civilians. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and more recently Haiti, regular troops face enemies in civilian clothes in regional conflicts. Strategic attacks are more important now, prompting the use of precision surgical strikes, elite commandos raiding enemies in stealth, and all-around soldiers who fight in small units. With the changing military doctrine, military logistics has to keep up with the pace. Thus the more nimble, flexible, precise, and speedy logistics operations are born.
Current technologies allow logisticians to track materials by RFID and satellite then route (or reroute) them to points of demand in amazing precision. General Gas Pagonis (SVP logistics Sears, former Army logistics commander in the 1st Gulf War, author of "Moving Mountains") explained in his book how they were able to move large quantities of military supplies to support the massive operations in 1990. His operations, like Sears, were based on an assembly line, make-to-stock approach. It worked well in 1990 and led the American to a decisive military victory. However, it's a product of the old industrial operation of mass production and mass consumption that may not meet today's challenges in supply chain management.
Fast forward to 2004. Consumers demand customized products, companies like Dell operate a make-to-order business model, time to market is oftentimes critical to a company's survival and success, and shortened product life cycles imply ever changing logistics procedures and requirements. It's more important to move ONE product to ONE consumer when he/she needs it; it's less important to have mountains of products sitting on the shelf, waiting to be picked up by consumers. The emergence of online retailers such as eBay, Netflix, and Amazon is a great example of how such speedy order fulfillment helps them conquer the marketplace. Traditional companies are also beginning to realize the importance of quick response but have not changed the supply chain capabilities to fully take advantage of this new battlefield (Stalk, Time Based Competition). I am sure that more companies will pay attention to their supply chain and develop ways to shorten the delivery cycles. In other word, this is an era where speed kills. Or as Tommy Frank told the military logisticians: speed kills...the enemies. 03/26/2004
posted by Harley Boy @ 5:43 PM
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