11 critical competencies supply chain planners need now (and how to develop them)
The knowledge, skills, and attitudes that today’s planning professionals require differ from those of just a few years ago. Companies must be more proactive in providing educational opportunities and creating processes, metrics, and incentives that build professionals’ competencies and contribute to developing tomorrow’s planning leaders.
The pandemic exposed some hard truths about the state of supply chain planning. Significant gaps in employee competencies, a shortage of empowered senior leaders, and insufficient organizational support severely constrained many companies’ responses to the worldwide crisis. Leading companies have taken those lessons to heart and are now making supply chain planning a strategic priority.
Consider the experience of one multinational IT infrastructure company. The supply chain had established disciplines within its traditional functions. But the planning competencies needed to coordinate across functions and manage technology changes were severely lacking. As a senior supply chain manager related: “The company faced 20x our normal level of disruption during the pandemic. The volume of information needed to manage that much disruption was intense. So was the amount of cross-functional coordination.” Managers also struggled to communicate the larger, strategic impact of planning to senior leadership. “At the end of the day, you can only sell what you can get,” the manager said. “The big lesson for us coming out of the pandemic was that planning is much more than scheduling.”
Supply chain planning refers to a set of iterative, interconnected decisions aimed at continuously aligning company capacity, inventory, and other assets to maximize profits. It integrates a range of decisions across different time horizons: from longer-term optimization of global supply networks to near-term scheduling of deliveries. Figure 1 provides an overview of the different processes involved in supply chain planning.
FIGURE 1: Planning framework
Senior executives are looking to planners to lead key initiatives from innovation and digitization to agility and risk management. Our team at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville’s Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative (ASCC) has been working to define the planning talent and leadership development needed to meet these new expectations. (For additional information about the ASCC, see the sidebar below.)
Next-generation planning talent
Our findings suggest planning competencies need to evolve beyond traditional technical skills to include a broad array of social and personal strengths. Our team identified 11 planning competencies (see Figure 2) that reflect this evolution:
FIGURE 2: The 11 core competencies of supply chain planning
Ambiguity tolerance. The ability to act effectively in situations where next steps are undefined, there are multiple interpretations, or signals are weak or mixed.
Self-awareness. The ability to see oneself and one’s work within larger professional and personal contexts.
Change leadership. The ability to help others succeed in new and changing contexts.
Compelling communication. The ability to present ideas in a manner that is clear, concise, data-driven, and oriented toward concrete action.
Conflict management. The ability to manage differences in ways that satisfy the needs of stakeholders while promoting learning and ethical action.
Cultural leadership. The ability to support and establish organizational cultures—and help those cultures evolve over time.
Data analytics. The ability to analyze data to generate insights that drive action.
Empathy. The ability to recognize another’s experiences and act appropriately in a helpful manner.
Negotiation skills. The ability to uncover mutually beneficial outcomes through a prosocial concern for stakeholders.
Team leadership. The ability to provide purpose, accountability, and resources to a team.
Technological fluency. The ability to drive new opportunities through a detailed understanding of current and emerging technologies.
Competencies drive transformation
These are not the typical knowledge, skills, and attitudes advertised for supply chain planning positions. But they are critical for success in today’s operating environment. Take ambiguity tolerance. Planners nowadays are often required to make decisions with partial information and take contingent actions in rapidly shifting environments. Moreover, planners must be comfortable engaging with different viewpoints and challenging their own perceptions.
Other competencies will be crucial for meeting the challenges of digitization. For example, leaders clearly express a desire for more digitized, automated planning processes, ranking their disparate data silos and a lack of visibility into material flows as top concerns. But research indicates that in order to realize the full value of advanced technologies, companies must invest in the capabilities of their people. To drive digital transformation, planning leaders must develop teams with the technological fluency to test new solutions and assess their potential value.
Beyond technological fluency, planners will also need to be comfortable leading change. A true digital capability means routinely identifying, assessing, and adopting technologies in ways that push the productivity frontier and serve as a basis for competitive advantage. Planners will need to support others as new technologies transform traditional roles and responsibilities. The bottom line is that managing social and psychological factors associated with change will be as important as the technical implementation. Planners need to be ready for this new aspect of their work.
Focus on experience
Competencies emerge through experiences. By applying knowledge and skills through experiences, planners build the “muscle memory” that is at the core of any competency. As leaders start to define talent development programs, they need to expose planners to high-impact, hands-on learning, and then support those experiences with educational opportunities, processes, metrics, and incentives.
Supporting experiences that build planning competencies can be a challenge. First, no single experience will generate a desired competency. Instead, companies need to provide a range of experiences that support different elements of the planning competencies they hope to build. This takes thinking creatively about actions that can drive social and personal strengths. Our research identified five broad areas (see Figure 3) for companies to consider in supporting planning competencies:
FIGURE 3: Five broad action areas to support planning competency development
Enhancing storytelling and communication. Integrating information about the operating environment into a coherent narrative that motivates action is central to planning.
Infusing change management and influence strategies. Inspiring and leading change is critical for planners tasked with system transformation.
Linking diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to supply chain success. A robust DEI program has enormous potential to benefit the entire planning organization by helping to develop competencies not just among underrepresented groups but also for those not directly impacted by DEI recruitment and retention efforts.
Mentoring, coaching, and leadership. New hires and top talent alike do significantly better with an active sponsor, mentor, or coach.
Managing through ambiguity. Sustaining performance in planning requires a workforce that can adapt to changes in the marketplace and rapid technological advancements.
These broad-based organizational action areas are mutually supporting, helping to develop different dimensions across several competencies. For instance, linking diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to supply chain success entails developing talent from underrepresented groups and tapping their knowledge and experiences as resources for learning how to improve core work. Our research suggests that a robust DEI program has the potential to significantly support development in nine of the 11 core competencies identified above: ambiguity tolerance, self-awareness, change leadership, compelling communication, conflict management, cultural leadership, empathy, negotiation skills, and team leadership.
The point is that, as companies pursue their strategic objectives, they must think broadly about the individual-level competencies planners will need. Implementing specific training programs to achieve particular capabilities will likely fall short. Rather, companies should focus on organizational action areas that broadly support the organization’s talent development needs. (Suggestions for specific educational opportunities, processes, metrics, and incentives for each of the five action areas can be found in the white paper, “Developing the Next-Generation of Supply Chain Planning Talent and Leadership” on ASCC’s website.)
Now is the time
Supply chain planners need a new set of competencies to drive organizational success. Planners must be comfortable managing teams, leading change, and adapting to new technologies. Other capabilities may also be needed. For example, extensions of our research suggest financial literacy and business acumen may be critical competencies for planners to develop.
As leaders approach developing the next generation of planning talent, they should ask themselves a number of questions: Does my company have a process for identifying the competencies needed to achieve planning excellence? What experiences is my company providing planners to build their competencies? What educational opportunities, processes, metrics, and incentives does my company have in place to develop planning competencies? The time to start developing the next generation of planning talent is now.
About this research
This research was conducted as part of the Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative (ASCC) at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville (UT). The ASCC works as a think tank, engaging industry experts and UT faculty on leading topics in supply chain management. Teams of three to four individuals from two or more companies, led by a UT faculty member, work together on a topic of shared interest. Projects provide significant peer-to-peer learning in an open and supportive environment. The goal is to provide today’s leaders with new insights for navigating a rapidly changing operating environment.
This research was conducted using an interactive research design. Weekly conversations were conducted with a core group of corporate partners with significant supply chain planning expertise. The team explored the project’s research questions through in-depth, open-ended conversations. Discussions drew on participants’ practical experiences with talent and leadership development challenges and members’ considerable expertise. Subject matter experts were brought into the discussion to drive deeper investigations of topics as they emerged. Conversation notes were captured, and central themes and insights were distilled and presented to the group each week. Ideas that emerged were validated against the research literature; new ideas were defined and dimensionalized.
The U.S., U.K., and Australia will strengthen supply chain resiliency by sharing data and taking joint actions under the terms of a pact signed last week, the three nations said.
The agreement creates a “Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group” designed to build resilience in priority supply chains and to enhance the members’ mutual ability to identify and address risks, threats, and disruptions, according to the U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade.
One of the top priorities for the new group is developing an early warning pilot focused on the telecommunications supply chain, which is essential for the three countries’ global, digitized economies, they said. By identifying and monitoring disruption risks to the telecommunications supply chain, this pilot will enhance all three countries’ knowledge of relevant vulnerabilities, criticality, and residual risks. It will also develop procedures for sharing this information and responding cooperatively to disruptions.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the group chose that sector because telecommunications infrastructure is vital to the distribution of public safety information, emergency services, and the day to day lives of many citizens. For example, undersea fiberoptic cables carry over 95% of transoceanic data traffic without which smartphones, financial networks, and communications systems would cease to function reliably.
“The resilience of our critical supply chains is a homeland security and economic security imperative,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a release. “Collaboration with international partners allows us to anticipate and mitigate disruptions before they occur. Our new U.S.-U.K.-Australia Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group will help ensure that our communities continue to have the essential goods and services they need, when they need them.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help users build “smart and responsive supply chains” by increasing workforce productivity, expanding visibility, accelerating processes, and prioritizing the next best action to drive results, according to business software vendor Oracle.
To help reach that goal, the Texas company last week released software upgrades including user experience (UX) enhancements to its Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM) suite.
“Organizations are under pressure to create efficient and resilient supply chains that can quickly adapt to economic conditions, control costs, and protect margins,” Chris Leone, executive vice president, Applications Development, Oracle, said in a release. “The latest enhancements to Oracle Cloud SCM help customers create a smarter, more responsive supply chain by enabling them to optimize planning and execution and improve the speed and accuracy of processes.”
According to Oracle, specific upgrades feature changes to its:
Production Supervisor Workbench, which helps organizations improve manufacturing performance by providing real-time insight into work orders and generative AI-powered shift reporting.
Maintenance Supervisor Workbench, which helps organizations increase productivity and reduce asset downtime by resolving maintenance issues faster.
Order Management Enhancements, which help organizations increase operational performance by enabling users to quickly create and find orders, take actions, and engage customers.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Enhancements, which help organizations accelerate product development and go-to-market by enabling users to quickly find items and configure critical objects and navigation paths to meet business-critical priorities.
Nearly one-third of American consumers have increased their secondhand purchases in the past year, revealing a jump in “recommerce” according to a buyer survey from ShipStation, a provider of web-based shipping and order fulfillment solutions.
The number comes from a survey of 500 U.S. consumers showing that nearly one in four (23%) Americans lack confidence in making purchases over $200 in the next six months. Due to economic uncertainty, savvy shoppers are looking for ways to save money without sacrificing quality or style, the research found.
Younger shoppers are leading the charge in that trend, with 59% of Gen Z and 48% of Millennials buying pre-owned items weekly or monthly. That rate makes Gen Z nearly twice as likely to buy second hand compared to older generations.
The primary reason that shoppers say they have increased their recommerce habits is lower prices (74%), followed by the thrill of finding unique or rare items (38%) and getting higher quality for a lower price (28%). Only 14% of Americans cite environmental concerns as a primary reason they shop second-hand.
Despite the challenge of adjusting to the new pattern, recommerce represents a strategic opportunity for businesses to capture today’s budget-minded shoppers and foster long-term loyalty, Austin, Texas-based ShipStation said.
For example, retailers don’t have to sell used goods to capitalize on the secondhand boom. Instead, they can offer trade-in programs swapping discounts or store credit for shoppers’ old items. And they can improve product discoverability to help customers—particularly older generations—find what they’re looking for.
Other ways for retailers to connect with recommerce shoppers are to improve shipping practices. According to ShipStation:
70% of shoppers won’t return to a brand if shipping is too expensive.
51% of consumers are turned off by late deliveries
40% of shoppers won’t return to a retailer again if the packaging is bad.
Businesses were preparing to deal with the effects of the latest major storm of the 2024 hurricane season as Francine barreled toward the Gulf Coast Wednesday.
Louisiana was experiencing heavy rain and wind gusts at midday as the storm moved northeast through the Gulf and was expected to pick up speed. The state will bear the brunt of Francine’s wind, rain, and storm damage, according to forecasters at weather service provider AccuWeather.
“AccuWeather meteorologists are projecting a storm surge of 6-10 feet along much of the Louisiana coast with a pocket of 10-15 feet on some of the inland bays in south-central Louisiana,” the company reported in an afternoon update Wednesday.
Businesses and supply chains were prepping for delays and disruptions from the storm earlier this week. Supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc said the storm will have a “significant impact” on a wide range of industries along the Gulf Coast, including aerospace, life sciences, manufacturing, oil and gas, and high-tech, among others. In a statement, Resilinc said energy companies had evacuated personnel and suspended operations on oil platforms as of Tuesday. In addition, the firm said its proprietary data showed the storm could affect nearly 11,000 manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, fabrication, and testing sites across the region, putting at risk more than 57,000 parts used in everyday items and the manufacture of more than 4,000 products.
Francine, which was expected to make landfall as a category 2 hurricane, according to AccuWeather, follows the devastating effects of two storms earlier this summer: Hurricane Beryl, which hit the Texas coast in July, and Hurricane Debby, which caused $28 billion in damage and economic loss after hitting the Southeast on August 5.
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Supply chain managers at consumer goods manufacturing companies are tasked with meeting mandates from large retailers to implement item-level RFID.
Supply chain managers at consumer goods manufacturing companies are tasked with meeting mandates from large retailers to implement item-level RFID. Initially these requirements applied primarily to apparel manufacturers and brands. Now, realizing the fruits of this first RFID wave, retailers are turning to suppliers to tag more merchandise.
This is one more priority for supply chain leaders, who suddenly have RFID added to their to-do list. How to integrate tagging into automated production lines? How to ensure each tag functions properly after goods are packed, shipped, and shelved? Where to position the RFID tag on the product? All are important questions to be answered in order to implement item-level RFID. The clock is ticking on retail mandates.
Different products, new RFID considerations
Hangtags, the primary form of apparel product identification, present a relatively easy way to attach an RFID tag. Pressure-sensitive labels likewise can carry an RFID inlay. The inlay, consisting of a microchip and antenna, holds the product’s unique identifying information. This tiny device is activated when the RFID reader passes by it. For nonapparel products, in many cases, there is no way to attach a hangtag. Therefore, a pressure-sensitive RFID label often must be put directly on the product. If the product is packaged in a box, the RFID carrier can be attached to or placed inside the box. Either way involves the use of just the right solutions, including the adhesive, shape, dimension, and placement. Moreover, there must be an efficient way to attach the labels to products. This requires process engineering and sometimes capital investment to integrate RFID labeling into highly automated manufacturing lines.
Metals, liquids, and low-surface-energy (LSE) materials pose hurdles for RFID item tagging. Tag and label inlays cannot be read properly through metals and liquids, and the pressure-sensitive labels do not always stick well to product surfaces containing silicone, vinyl, polyethylene, and polystyrene. Very small items are also difficult to tag. Metal paint cans, caulk or paste tubes, lipsticks, and reusable water bottles are just a few products that present RFID tagging challenges.
In other cases, it is not so much the product itself that hinders readability but rather the shipping method. For example, it is relatively straightforward to apply an RFID tag or label to a bag of fertilizer. But the fertilizer bags might be stacked 60 deep on a pallet. The pressure is too much. It damages the inlay, killing the tag’s readability. So, RFID tags, which were perfectly fine coming off the production line, are now dead from the stacking pressure.
Solutions and testing
RFID tagging and labeling programs take time to get right. While some manufacturers can set up a successful process in a few weeks or months, for others it can take six months, nine months, a year or longer. Variables influencing implementation time include capital equipment investments, the product types (for example, are the materials, shapes, or surfaces potentially problematic?), label supplier capacity and capabilities, and third-party testing rounds.
The good news is that best practices are being refined every day to incorporate RFID on difficult-to-tag products. A case in point is finding answers to RFID-inlay readability issues on metal or liquid products. There are ways to attach an RFID label to the product’s lid or cap.
The University of Auburn RFID Lab is the de facto U.S. authority on all things retail RFID. Through its ARC program, the lab works with end users to make sure RFID tags meet or exceed their required performance and quality levels. Walmart, for example, requires its suppliers to source from Auburn RFID Lab’s ARC program-approved inlay companies. “ARC is a test system and database that stores comprehensive performance data of in-development and market available RFID tags,” according to the lab’s website. “ARC has been working with end users to translate RFID use cases into specific levels of performance in the ARC test environment.”
High-quality RFID tags and labels are at the heart of it all. The following are some considerations to keep in mind when choosing an RFID tag and label provider:
What are their quality control and testing capabilities? Can they confirm that every tag is readable? Do they have software to verify that UPC and RFID information match up? Do they possess familiarity with Auburn’s RFID Lab approval process?
What is their capacity? How many thousands or millions of inlays do they create per day? Are there minimum order quantities?
What are their order management and shipping processes like? What is their delivery speed? How easy are they to order from? Where are their print facilities located?
Do they offer customization? Do they possess specialized equipment? Can they die cut irregular shapes, including very small dimensions? Do they possess adhesive expertise and application equipment? Do they have solutions for metal, liquid, and other difficult-to-tag items? Are they able to configure label rolls to work on automatic label dispensers?
It takes trial and error to implement RFID item tagging for nonapparel products. Effective, compliant programs do not manifest overnight. Collaboration with experienced label providers and the Auburn RFID Lab will help manufacturers overcome even the most complex RFID tagging challenges. There will be a roadmap to success, and the results in the form of better inventory visibility, swifter sell-through, and stronger sales will be well worth it.