Your boss has asked you to analyze the quality issues facing your supply chain operations. Not all questions need to be answered, but your response should be well thought out and within the deliverable length.
Benchmarking
- Against which companies will you benchmark?
- What parameters will you attempt to benchmark?
- How will you obtain information on those (competitor) companies?
- Will you rely on public reports and documents such as Annual Reports and SEC filings, or will you need to enlist the services of a consulting/business intelligence organization?
- Will you attempt to benchmark against only companies in your industry or look at world-class companies in other industries?
- If you look at companies in other industries, how will you adjust/account for the difference in industries?
Change Management
- Do you have the (internal) resources to lead/control the changes that will be needed?
- Do you have the right personnel now, or will you need to replace/reassign some people?
- Do you have the (internal) resources to conduct the training that will be required, or will you need to hire a training organization?
- If you hire, what are the characteristics of the organization for which you will be looking?
- Who will be responsible for managing the corporate/divisional change?
- What is the time frame for achieving the change?
- Who will define the change that needs to be made?
- Is there a budget for the process? If so, how much? Is the budget adequate for the anticipated man hours that will be expended?
- How will your organization recognize when the change process is complete?
- What is your organization's definition of success?
Performance Measurement
- What are the key performance measurements that best define/represent the current performance level?
- Inventory turns, cost per transaction/shipment, labor efficiency (dollars of output divided by man hours), machine efficiency (dollars of input divided by hours of operation), equipment uptime, transportation costs, raw material costs, or overhead?