Transforming an End-to-End Supply Chain Q&A Part 1

I was privileged to speak to American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) on 11-July at a webinar concerning Berry Global’s Supply Chain Transformation. The presentation was a command performance from APICS 2017, which discussed the overall strategy and methodology to support a large, multi-year portfolio of supply chain improvement initiatives. I thought the question and answer session for the discussion was impactful and was ecstatic when APQC gave me permission to share. So, without further ado, below is part 1 from the “Transforming an End to End Supply Chain” webinar. In this portion, I answer questions around the following:

1) Who lead or drove the transformation from the beginning?

• You must have a champion
• You must have the “right” champion who has credibility with other executives, deep understanding of the business and broad experience across the supply chain.

2) How many people were in the COE leading the transformation initiatives?

• Numbers are the key driver – You must have the “right” people.
• Need to balance line of business users with technology SMEs to ensure you positively impact people, process and tools.
• COE leaders work with the business units to form fully functional and impactful teams.

3) How did we sustain momentum and drive change management?

• Gain alignment and support from executives early and often
• Don’t lose sight of the need to communicate to executives after you start implementation
• You can always improve in this area.

4) Who was responsible for training across all of the functions impacted?

• It depends.
• Must start with an assessment of your stakeholders / customers and ensure you meet their needs.
• Leveraging a pilot, aka Proof of Concept, approach helps reduce risk, gain valuable design feed AND create subject matter experts.
• Pilot SMEs allow the deployment of a train the trainer model which is required in large, complex organizations.

You can access the clip and listen to my full answer using the following link:

To learn more about APQC and their work, please visit https://www.apqc.org/