@ Supply Chain Management

SDCExec.com has posted a Global Supply Chain Best Practices Quiz authored by Bernie Hart, a global product executive at JPMorgan Chase Vastera.

Start the New Year right with nine tips for evaluating your supply chain management organization

First the scoring matrix,

Upon finishing the quiz, if you find that you have responded with more “no” than “yes” answers, 2007 may be the time to transform these gaps into opportunities for improved supply chain management and greater profitability.

Bernie provides in total 27 questions under 9 major areas. The only problem that I have with this quiz is that reaching a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer is a difficult proposition – in other words, this is a difficult (and perhaps for some, a very difficult) quiz. In fact, for a number of questions, the answers are likely to indeterminate.
Take the following question for example under the major heading:

Design of your Global Supply Chain Network should align with your customers’ requirements and expectations.

Are customer service levels understood, and is the supply chain designed to meet them?

How can you answer whether the supply chain is designed to meet the understood customer service levels? If you attempted to answer this question at the very strategic look (perhaps through some optimization problem), how would you incorporate the notion of customer service levels into that model. If you took the route of inventory modeling and optimization that allows you to position your inventories in appropriate locations in order to meet expected customer service levels, how do you account for the optimal logistics model to actually execute this inventory location. The answer, as of now, cannot be given so easily.

Other questions such as the following:

Supply Chain exception management processes should drive action

Is information about the goods in the major trade lanes made available to supply chain operations?

and,

Sourcing decisions should consider the impact on customer service and profit — not just unit cost or landed cost.

Are global sourcing and landed cost tools used to assist in sourcing decisions?

and,

A single function should be responsible for establishing the value of imported goods and must reconcile financial input from all sources of supply

Is product valuation regularly audited?

are perhaps answered a little easier.
I must commend Bernie (and others from Vastera) on putting up these questions because his stated objective is a good one –

…a self evaluation quiz that touches upon several key supply chain issues that are sometimes overlooked. Created by the global supply chain experts at JPMorgan Chase Vastera, the quiz is designed to help you gain greater insight into some of the strengths and potential weaknesses of your current supply chain operations.

So take the quiz and find out!!

Tags: Bernie Hart, Vastera, JPMorgan Chase Vastera, Global Supply Chain, Global Supply Chain Best Practices, Supply Chain Management, SCM, Global Supply Chain Network