What Lessons a Table Fable Teaches About Supply Chain Orchestration
I should have known better. I work in supply chain. Even worse, I work for a company who makes solutions to help companies solve these kinds of problems, which I listen, speak and write about for a living! What was the problem? I ordered a table online without checking reviews sufficiently. If I had done due diligence, I’d have seen the warnings – the retailer had pretty pictures on their website, but their supply chain failed them, creating an eleven-month saga and unhappy customer. The combinatorial factors disrupting supply chains persist, but in this case the problem was completely preventable. The issue wasn’t poor planning – they had the inventory. The failure was in supply chain orchestration – connecting planning to execution.