Aaaargh! Expletive. They are a tangled and knotted mass. For many of us, they appear to be very complex. The move to global has made it worse. Is it one? Or is it many? Ninety percent of the companies that I have worked with over the last seven years deal with this tangled mess as one; yet, supply chain professionals know intuitively that they do not have just one supply chain. They also know that if they could unravel them, that they could drive higher levels of supply chain performance. The question for most is HOW? If your response to "How many supply chains do you have?" is "I don't know", this blog post is written for you. The best supply chain designs start outside-in (from the channel to supply), recognize the drivers of the supply chain, and apply the design holistically to the value network from customer's customer to supplier's supplier. As companies navigate this journey, I find that they shift. They mature to look at supply chains through a different lens.
