For more than five years, Supply Chain Planning has been the top focus area for leaders of end-to-end supply chains. For 2024, organizations in APQC's research have identified several actionable strategies for improvement in this key area.
Here are three key considerations when implementing supply chain planning improvements.
- Collaboration is critical in supply chain planning—Organizations in any industry will be well-served by improving collaboration and communication, which was the second most popular actionable strategy for supply chain planning. Good cooperation and communication are foundational for the ability to work efficiently across business areas and silos. This is especially important for processes like integrated business planning (IBP) and supply and demand forecasting, which involve numerous stakeholders and functional areas.
- Technology is an opportunity and a challenge—Implementing new technologies and capabilities is the third most popular actionable strategy for supply chain planning, and it’s not hard to see why. Emergent technologies like supplier risk notification systems are helping organizations respond to disruptions more quickly and, in some cases, even avoid them entirely. Solutions increasingly incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to provide key insights for complex processes like IBP, forecasting, and planning. New technologies also require effective change management due to process changes, new roles, new forms of governance, and other organizational changes.
- Standardized processes help build resilience- With supply chains facing so much uncertainty, it may seem like standardized processes would be too rigid and inflexible to help organizations withstand disruption. The opposite is true. While no one can perfectly predict the future, organizations can and should develop a contingency playbook with different scenario plans for various triggers. Having a standardized set of processes you can implement in response to various scenarios will help minimize the time your organization spends planning how to respond to disruption.
Learn more about these supply chain planning strategic considerations in APQC’s Supply Chain Planning: Priorities and Strategies for 2024. Explore the full set of supply chain expectations and trends in APQC's 2024 Supply Chain Priorities and Challenges collection.