Seven Best Practices for Supply Chain Execution Implementations

• What you need from your suppliers
• What your shareholders need from you
• What you need to do to gain market share
• What you need to do to increase revenue and reduce costs across the entire supply chain
• What information you need to provide to your host and/or legacy systems
• What you need to comply with governmental regulatory agencies
• What you need to retain employees and improve their work experience
• What you need to do to protect your customers.

• requests for information from vendors
• site visits
• scripted demos and an objective evaluation process.

It is important to understand that no single system can be everything to everyone, so it is at this time that a gap analysis is performed.



3. The Right Team— Executing the action plan

To ensure a successful implementation, the project team must be comprised of team members with the right stuff. For an SCE system, a cross-functional team made up of manufacturing, customer service, receiving, inventory control, quality assurance, logistics/transportation and shipping personnel is a step in the right direction. Although some team members’ experiences are more critical to the validation of the system’s core functionality, the extended team can help ensure that a holistic approach is taken and will ultimately result in a system that will benefit the entire business rather than just the day-to-day system operators.

Projects that impact the way you do business require significant resources (human and monetary) and take time. There are three factors that will dictate the successful implementation of the action plan: quality people, dedicated time and an appropriate number of people to complete the project. Reducing one of those factors requires an adjustment in one (or both) of the other areas. Since people cost money and time is money, it often comes down to, guess what? Money.


4. The Right Processes— Realizing system benefits

The final SCE system design must have its foundation in operational best practices. These processes must be defined and designed down to the front line end-user’s keystroke level system interaction. Although at this stage of the project, the right objectives and expectations, the right system and the right team are in place, it is time to fine-tune the processes.

System design is a tedious, yet important process that begins with interviewing key users of the current system to gain comprehensive understanding of the entire business process. Without this knowledge, bad assumptions are made and flawed processes are put into place. It is critical to understand everything from where goods come from to where they are going and everything in between, including the software and hardware architecture and infrastructure that has supported the old way and will be expected to support the new way of doing things.

The project team must ensure that at every turn, they are taking advantage of the systems’ functionality while not shortcutting, or conversely complicating, the needs of the business. Many times, the best answer is the simplest. Get input from everyone in the operation and in the support organization, and analyze the input to make the right decision when it comes to your processes and your business.

5. The Right Plan— Testing the system

Before putting your system into production, it is a given that it will need to be tested. To get the desired results, you must be certain that every operational process is tested (along with any of the associated functions that may trigger transactions that are sent to other systems). Furthermore, the respective business owners of the data (and the owners of any other system with which the new system is interfacing) must review the results of the tests. Prepare a detailed business scenario tracking matrix and provide the business owners with an opportunity to review and to provide input to the business conditions to be tested. The supply chain execution implementation project will, and should, have farther-reaching effects than just your supply chain, so it is critical that every system that has an interface to or from the supply chain execution package is considered when developing your test plan.



6. The Right Training— Using the system effectively

If an SCE system implementation fails, it often fails not due to a flawed design, but by ineffective use by system operators on the floor. You cannot make a system foolproof. Rather, you must ensure that your users know how to use the system to get the expected results. Use simulation whenever possible and perform mock facility tests using the same equipment and processes that will be used after you throw the switch. Another key component of the training process is the need to convey information consistently and in accordance with the tested and proven design. The primary mechanism to ensure this consistency is the standard operating procedure (SOP). Even the most thoroughly tested system can fall apart if users resort to workarounds that have not been made part of the final design. When writing the new SOPs, keep in mind that most of the operators will be more inclined to use them if they include screen shots and easy-to-follow bullets that apply to the specific tasks that they will be expected to execute.

It is equally important to include non-system related processes in the SOPs, as most of the system users do a lot more work than just key data and scan bar codes. Make sure that there is an exception section in every SOP to help users through those situations that may happen rarely, yet are certain to happen. These situations often have the greatest potential for negative impacts downstream.

Before you can go live, you must be able to determine, objectively, that the users understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. Competency assessment must be an integral part of any successful training program so that those who understand can be certified, and those who do not understand can receive additional guidance. Make sure that managers understand the system as well as, if not better than, their subordinates.


7. The Right Timing and Support— Minimizing impact to your customers

Support for the entire implementation project must come straight from top leadership in your organization. Believe it or not, not everyone will be as excited as you are about the new system. Many people in the business would rather keep using the old system because they are comfortable with it. The challenge of learning the new system and the time and effort required may not seem worthwhile to the rest of the organization. You must work to ensure buy-in at all levels and continue to communicate the benefits of the new system to those who will be impacted by the transition.

A critical component of the implementation process is a conversion and ramp-up plan. This plan is a roadmap to ensure that incremental steps are taken during the go-live activities to prevent anything that may have been missed from crippling the business. If things are not going well, you have to be brave and consider your options. Ultimately, no one will remember whether you hit your target go-live date, but everyone will remember if you succeeded or not. The conversion and ramp-up plan will provide the critical success factors and key performance indexes that you need to help make these decisions.


Executing for Success

Don’t allow yourself to be talked out of implementing an SCE system because you believe all of the bad press. The business benefits are there for the taking if you plan your implementation properly.

Yes, embarking upon a supply chain execution system implementation project and following through to putting the system into production is not easy. However, most worthwhile business improvement strategies are rarely easy endeavors. Don’t be intimidated. Go into the process armed with the knowledge of experienced veterans who know and have conquered the pitfalls. By applying these best practices to and throughout an SCE implementation, you can make your project a success.