Surprise! A Dirty Word In Supply Chain

This post is personal to my experience. So get comfy and settle in for a story.

I’ve worked in Supply Chain for over 20 years, worked with all kinds of tools- from paper and pencils (!!Can you imagine!!), to SAP, JDA, NetSuite, Quickbooks, worked in multi-nationals and mom and pop shops, all kinds of products and lead times and production processes and customers. Along the way, I have definitely seen some s*&!. Things that go wrong regularly (and can be planned for/prevented), things that go right (and should be used as best practices models), and things that come out of nowhere, derailing plans and leaving you thinking - how did THAT just happen??

We all know that Murphy’s Law is Supply Chain’s BFF.

When I first started, I worked for a dear friend who had her own rapidly growing apparel company. Before we worked together, I remember her horrified voice telling me how “the lace had run out”. In the middle of a production run. On a new launch. In a very specific color and pattern. With a long lead time. From a single vendor.

Painful.

A short time later, when I was working at a custom machining and fabrication company, I was sharing my own “lace” story. The peek screw, made from material more expensive than gold (or so I was reminded constantly), only supplied by one company, also with a long lead time and difficult to produce, had run out. It was used in all builds for our largest customer. We were completely stopped on production.

Painful.

We have all been there at one time or another. That terrible sinking feeling when you realize your critical item is gone and there is no backup or workaround possible. A torture unique to working in Supply Chain.

I’ve experienced this more times than I care to admit. Enough times to have learned something- many things actually.

Most stock outs can be prevented with appropriate, automated tools/alerts, strong partnership and a backup plan for all items ready to activate at a moment’s notice. The more complex the item is to receive (long lead times, long distances to travel, difficult build process) the more important it is to have that backup plan.

But the most important lesson I learned is that often times our greatest lessons come from our worst experiences.

Each of those painful experiences lives in my mind as a map of risks around which supply can be planned. Learning what could go wrong from seeing what did go wrong was VERY unpleasant but also VERY useful.

If Supply Chain is mostly about managing risk, having had that experience is like having a map to success.

So, if you’re deep in dealing with the endless Supply Chain issues that have multiplied since 2020, just know this will provide you with endless experiences from which to draw and succeed later.

Stop looking at us Murphy!