When 8 a.m. comes around you know where you can find Timothy Bye. The director of supply chain at medical technology firm Hologic in Bedford, Mass., will be sitting down in his daily cross-functional meeting discussing the $1.6bn firm's production plans for the day with a team of buyers, materials managers, production planners and operations professionals. Some of them are at the table with Bye, some are on the phone around the country or even around the world.
Just a day in the life of a supply chain executive.
In fact, it's just one of a series of cross-functional meetings Bye takes part in or leads in the course of a day, week or month. On a weekly basis, he'll be in meetings with core teams in areas ranging from product development to purchasing to marketing. He'll personally meet with suppliers on a quarterly basis along with his commodity teams to review supplier performance, give them updates on Hologic's priorities and outline its goals going forward for the supplier.
Why so many meetings? Well, as any supply chain pro knows, collaboration is central to any good supply chain strategy and the best way to drive collaboration is by having everyone in on the same conversation at once.
