Four Dimensions of Supply Chain – Part 2

The Competition:

In today’s highly globalised and volatile environment companies no longer compete one-on-one, but their supply chains do, so the incremental value addition becomes critical to avoid supply chain extinction.

Today’s competition is moving from “among organisations” to “between supply chains”, more and more organisations are increasingly adopting lean and nimble SCM practice with a primary objective of reducing supply chain costs in order to gain competitive advantage. It has been established beyond any doubt that supply chain management practices will have a discernible impact on competitive advantage, product differentiation and finally organisational performance.

Ma Yun, known professionally as Jack Ma, is a Chinese business magnate who is the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group believes that the competition is a force to recon to strength your supply chain.

Word of Caution – “Companies that solely focus on competition will die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive”

Conclusion – Competition is a necessity, it enables us to deliver our best and eliminates complacency and avoids mediocrity.  Even in horse racing, you need competition to make the horse run fast to win the competition.

The easiest thing is becoming number one and the most difficult task is retaining it. You can only achieve maintain your leadership over your competition by converting enemies’ weakness into your strength. Thought leadership, Predictive Supply Chain Model, Supply Chain Agility are the last legal unfair competitive advantages one can make use to run over the competition.

Finally, advice from well-known businessmen Jack Welch – “Cash is the King, Communicate, buy or bury the competition.“