May 11, 2010 | Alliance management, Demand chains, Leadership
When people are tied together, when they are in “communities” they tend to develop shared values, aspirations, and courses of action. The incidence of double dealing, dishonesty, personal gain at the expense of the community gain, are reduced.
An efficient demand chain is just another type of community, it benefits from the collaboration, is able to identify and filter out self interest and hubris, and can deliver value to all participants.
The oxygen of such a community is information, both the quantitative data that can be collected and shared, but perhaps more importantly, the qualitative stuff that accrues with use, personal relationships, shared obligations, the mutual understanding of peoples idiosyncrasies, and simply the need to be recognised.
Apr 29, 2010 | Alliance management, Communication, Demand chains, Social Media, Strategy
Democratising knowledge, isn’t this a lovely term! I have heard it used on a number of occasions recently, and it came up again in an extraordinary TED presentation by Stephen Wolfram .
In just two words it nails the complex changes happening in numerous ways in our lives. Knowledge used to be power, now it is freely available, it is simply a tool, and the ones who use it best will win, rather than in the past, where the holder of the knowledge had a huge advantage.
Amongst all the other things that have changed, is the potential to turn simple supply chains that pump product into a channel driven only by capacity, into demand chains that respond backwards to demand signals from the customer.
This opportunity for change driven by a combination of the communication tools on the net, and the ability to assemble and analyse the drivers of demand in your particular market offers huge potential for innovation, efficiency, and differentiation based on the capabilities of those in the chain.
Apr 3, 2010 | Alliance management, Change, Operations
Whilst we observe the rather sudden tarnishing of Toyota’s quality aura, it is easy to lose sight of the enormous value Toyota has given to our understanding of efficient and flexible manufacturing. The lessons are everywhere, there would not be a manufacturing operation anywhere in the dev eloped world that has not benefited from the expertise developed and shared by Toyota.
Our understanding of the TPS began when Toyota began manufacturing outside Japan, its first foray was a JV with General Motors in their Fremont California plant, in a JV called New United Motors Manufacturing Inc, or “NUMMI” as it is commonly called.
This JV is a milestone in our understanding of manufacturing, the link is to a Sloan Management Review article written by one of the modern gurus of lean manufacturing, john Shook, who was a key employee in the development of NUMMI, and its subsequent success.
Anybody unfamiliar with the story should take 10 minutes and come up to speed, and this article is the quickest way.
Mar 31, 2010 | Alliance management, Change, Demand chains, OE
It seems that everywhere there is a drive to collaborate, without any real regard to the challenges of collaboration, the behavioral and cultural changes necessary for success. Collaboration has become an end in itself, rather than a strategy that has the potential to deliver value to both parties under the appropriate circumstances.
For a collaboration to be successful, there are two pre-conditions:
- There is a genuinely important shared goal, and the goal is powerful enough to drive resource allocation decisions in both collaborators
- The reward systems of both parties recognise the importance of achieving the goal.
Without these two preconditions, there is little chance of the collaboration doing anything more than take some time, probably cover someone’s arse, and perhaps give the appearance of something useful happening.
