Identify hidden potential with a supply chain maturity assessment

In today’s volatile business environment, companies are constantly pressured to evolve. External factors require agility, while internal limitations – such as long-term management blindness, ingrained processes, and lack of industry insights – can hinder progress. Without consistent improvement, businesses risk losing their competitive edge. This is where TenglerConsulting comes in, offering an external, unbiased perspective to assess and elevate your supply chain capabilities.

An advanced supply chain enhances efficiency, agility, and resilience. For instance, 55% of manufacturing businesses prioritize improving visibility to reduce disruptions and optimize inventory.[1] Companies using predictive analytics have increased demand forecast accuracy by up to 50%, preventing costly stockouts​.[2] Aligning your supply chain with these advancements is essential, ensuring your supply chain remains agile and resilient in an ever-evolving landscape.

After years of internal management, leaders often develop operational blind spots. Limited knowledge of industry best practices and ingrained work patterns can hinder the identification of key improvement areas, while resource constraints further limit the ability to execute necessary changes. Moreover, internal voices may go unheard – people tend not to trust their “own prophets.”

A supply chain maturity assessment is particularly valuable in multiple scenarios:

• For a regular review of current supply chain capabilities and identification of options to develop those as a part of continuous improvement process.
• When selecting IT tools, such as those used to support integrated business planning, understanding your current and target supply chain maturity is essential to choosing the right solutions.
• During corporate strategy updates, it’s necessary to assess whether your supply chain still aligns with and supports the new strategic objectives. Ensuring that your supply chain capabilities are up to the challenge of the updated strategy can prevent misalignment and performance gaps.

At TenglerConsulting, we offer a fresh, objective analysis of your supply chain, leveraging our deep expertise across industries and an unbiased, outsider perspective. Our assessments are built on the foundation of the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model, providing a standardized and structured approach.

Step 1: Define the Scope

This includes identifying the specific business units, supply chain processes, and stakeholders to be involved. We work closely with your team to collect available data and documentation of your current supply chain setup, ensuring a well-rounded starting point for the analysis.

 

Step 2: Analyze Documentation and Data

With access to your documentation, we tailor our assessment to your unique situation. Our deep dive into your demand patterns, inventory, and service KPIs provides fact-based insights. We benchmark your company’s performance against best practices from various industries, identifying areas that offer the most significant opportunities for improvement.

 

Step 3: Execute the Assessment

Next, we conduct on-site workshops, typically lasting 2-4 days. These workshops involve key stakeholders from supply chain management, sales, purchasing, production, logistics, and product management. Together, we explore current challenges, discuss trends, and examine best practices. This collaborative process enables you to pinpoint your supply chain’s current state and develop a high-level vision for its future maturity.

Our workshops start with a review of both internal and external factors that influence your supply chain strategy. For example, “what is your current corporate strategy?”, “what supply chain capabilities offer your business a competitive edge?”. We then conduct a detailed fit-gap analysis of the SCOR focus areas, such as “plan”, “source”, “transform”, and “fulfill”. This analysis spans dimensions like process, data, systems & tools, organization, and performance management.

This structured approach enables us to assess your supply chain maturity efficiently and identify hidden potentials.

 

Step 4: Develop and Sign-off a Roadmap

In the final workshop we aggregate our findings to create a detailed roadmap for improvement. Each identified pain point is linked to specific optimization levers, which are then prioritized and translated into actionable work packages that form the improvement roadmap.

We build our roadmaps on a modular basis, meaning not everything has to be done in one go. Strategically placed decision points allow you to evaluate progress and determine whether, when, and how to proceed with subsequent phases. This flexibility provides a practical way to balance ongoing operations with transformational initiatives.

The true power of a roadmap lies in the sequence. Many underestimate how much time, effort, and resources can be wasted if the order of execution isn’t precise. At TenglerConsulting, we specialize in analyzing dependencies between work packages, ensuring that every step builds on the last without disruption. This forward-looking arrangement of work packages is what separates a roadmap that works from one that stalls. Our expertise in sequencing means we’re not just offering solutions – we’re ensuring a seamless transformation from day one.

With our collaborative approach, we make certain that all your stakeholders are fully aligned and supportive of the developed roadmap. This buy-in is essential for successful implementation and long-term change management.

We conclude by presenting the assessment results, target state of supply chain setup and benefits to your C-level management. This presentation outlines how our proposed supply chain strategy aligns with your overall corporate goals, ensuring that the recommended actions are integrated into your strategic initiatives.

Our supply chain maturity assessment provides a structured roadmap for improving your supply chain capabilities. This process is backed by detailed analysis and buy-in from key stakeholders, setting the cornerstone of your journey toward optimized and advanced supply chain capabilities.

At TenglerConsulting, we pride ourselves on our in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis, conducted within just days. Our structured approach enables us to distill complex topics and insights into a clear, actionable long-term roadmap. Additionally, our collaborative process ensures that all stakeholders have a better understanding of your supply chain and the required improvements. This means stronger buy-in and alignment across your organization, fostering a more effective transformation.

 

 

Sources:
[1] Evans Christine, 2023. 37 Supply Chain Statistics, Trends, and Predictions for 2024. [Accessed: 17 October 2024].
[2] McKinsey & Company, 2022. Future-proofing the supply chain. [Accessed: 17 October 2024].