AGILITY: KEY TO SURVIVAL IN A COMPLEX, VOLATILE WORLD

Leaders strive for operational excellence and agility excellence Today’s volatile business world requires a different approach than the efficiency- oriented decades of the past. Agility in the value chain, and in the supply chain, has become a key requirement to cope with slow as well as sudden changes. Typically, there are two types of agility: • On an overall organizational level, it addresses the capability of the organization to adapt quickly to new general business challenges. Examples for this are channel volume shifts, emergence of new business models, new types of customer interaction, or major regional shifts. • On an operational level, it stands for the capability of the organization to adjust the supply chain to shifts in demand, supply, and in its product portfolio. This requires a specific kind of flexibility in production, distribution, and sourcing. What we have seen in our market research is that successful companies who are nimble and agile, always have already mastered the challenges of implementing operational excellence in their operations. These techniques build the foundation to have a fast, customer centric, cost-effective and high perfoming supply chain.

Operational supply chain excellence is based on six areas of using advanced practices

Agility excellence in supply chains is based on six areas of using practices based on early insights, and speed to implement

Leaders build agility excellence into their organizations In order to cope with the constant and ever increasing challenges from today’s volatile business world, companies have started to establish mechanisms which help them to have systematic insights into the nature of changes in their relevant business environment. This requires a new focus on what is really important for the company. Second main area to achieve is to systematically build enablers for fast response to changes, and consequent adaptation into all areas of the organization.

Leaders build key enablers for agility excellence into their operations In our studies and observations, we have identified some key methods and operational practices leading companies apply. These refer to a “hard tools area”, but predominantly they are from a “soft foundation” of leadership principles.

Enablers for agility excellence in supply chains consist of 8 areas of integrative methods and tools across the company, and 4 leadership and organizational practices