SCOR Supply Chain: A Practical Framework for Understanding and Improving the Entire Supply Chain.
Supply chains can become complicated very quickly. Planning speaks one language, procurement another, manufacturing focuses on production, logistics watches transportation, customer service concentrates on orders, and finance wants to understand what all of it means for cost, cash, and profitability. Everyone may be working hard while the organization still struggles to see how all of those activities fit together.
That is where the SCOR Supply Chain framework becomes valuable. SCOR, short for Supply Chain Operations Reference, gives organizations a common way to describe supply chain processes, measure performance, identify improvement opportunities, and connect individual activities to the larger end-to-end system. Instead of treating planning, sourcing, manufacturing, fulfillment, and returns as unrelated functions, SCOR helps people see them as parts of one connected flow.
The power of SCOR is not that it tells every company exactly how to operate. Its value comes from giving people a shared structure for understanding what the supply chain is supposed to do, how well it is performing, and where improvement is needed.
Instead of saying, “Our supply chain has problems,” a team using SCOR can ask much better questions. Is the problem in planning? Is supply unreliable? Is production constrained? Are customer orders being handled poorly? Is fulfillment too slow? Are returns destroying value? Those questions turn a vague supply chain problem into something people can actually analyze and improve.
What Is the SCOR Supply Chain Model?
The SCOR model was developed as a process-based framework for describing the business activities required to satisfy customer demand. The SupplyChainToday page and embedded video introduce the familiar SCOR structure through Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, and Return, while the page also references Enable as an important supporting element. The model is presented as comprehensive, standardized, flexible, and scalable, allowing organizations to use common terminology while adapting the framework to their particular supply chain.
That common language is one of SCOR’s greatest strengths. A manufacturer, distributor, retailer, logistics provider, or service organization may operate very different networks, but the basic challenges of planning demand and resources, obtaining supply, transforming inputs, fulfilling customer requirements, and managing reverse flows still exist.
SCOR creates a common map for discussing those activities. Once people are using the same map, conversations about performance and improvement become much easier.
SCOR Has Evolved With Modern Supply Chains
The original SCOR Supply Chain framework is still useful for understanding the basic logic of supply chain management, but the current ASCM SCOR Digital Standard has evolved beyond the traditional Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, Return structure.
Today, ASCM organizes SCOR around one Level-0 process, Orchestrate, and six Level-1 processes:
- Plan
- Order
- Source
- Transform
- Fulfill
- Return
This updated structure reflects the way modern supply chains have become more interconnected, digital, service-oriented, risk-aware, and focused on sustainability. ASCM describes SCOR DS as moving from a traditional linear supply chain view toward a more synchronous network.
The terminology has evolved for good reasons. Make became Transform because supply chains do much more than traditional manufacturing. Companies assemble, repair, refurbish, maintain, remanufacture, and provide services, all of which involve transforming inputs into something valuable.
Deliver was also separated into Order and Fulfill. That distinction recognizes that accepting, validating, and managing a customer order is different from physically picking, packing, shipping, installing, or invoicing against that order. Together, those changes make the current SCOR Supply Chain framework better suited to how supply chains actually operate today.
Orchestrate: Connect the Entire Supply Chain
Orchestrate sits above the other SCOR processes because someone has to connect the entire system. ASCM describes Orchestrate as the Level-0 process responsible for integrating and enabling supply chain strategies, including areas such as business rules, performance management, technology, data, people, network design, contracts, compliance, risk, sustainability, enterprise planning, and circular supply chains.
This is an important addition because many supply chain problems that appear operational actually begin at a higher level. Poor data governance can create planning errors. Weak supplier-risk management can become a production disruption. A badly designed network can create transportation cost and inventory problems that operations teams spend years trying to compensate for.
Orchestrate encourages leaders to ask whether the supply chain has the structure needed to perform well before blaming individual processes.
Important questions include:
- Do we have a clear supply chain strategy?
- Is decision ownership defined?
- Is our data reliable?
- Does our technology support the process?
- Are critical risks understood?
- Does the network still fit customer demand?
- Are our KPIs encouraging the right behavior?
- Do employees have the skills needed to execute?
The lesson is simple: a supply chain cannot be optimized only from the warehouse floor or planning screen. Some of the most important decisions happen above individual functions because they determine how the entire system will operate.
Plan: Balance Demand With Resources
Planning is where the organization begins deciding how to balance what customers are likely to need with what the supply chain is capable of providing. ASCM describes Plan as determining requirements, understanding available resources, identifying gaps between the two, and deciding what actions should be taken to close those gaps.
That makes planning much more than forecasting. A forecast may say customers will require 100,000 units next month, but if the business can supply only 85,000 units, the forecast has not solved the real problem.
The organization must decide what to do about the 15,000-unit gap.
Possible responses might include:
- Increase capacity
- Add supplier commitments
- Use available inventory
- Shift production
- Change priorities
- Adjust customer commitments
- Reposition inventory
SCOR helps make planning a business decision process rather than simply a forecasting exercise. The question is not only what demand will be, but how the entire supply chain should respond to that demand.
Order: Turn Customer Demand Into a Clear Commitment
The current SCOR Supply Chain framework gives Order its own process because the customer order deserves more attention than simply being the first step in fulfillment. ASCM describes Order as the activities associated with the customer purchase, including information such as product or service requirements, location, pricing, payment, and fulfillment status.
This matters because many problems that appear later in the supply chain actually begin when the order is created. Incorrect product information, unrealistic delivery promises, pricing errors, incomplete customer requirements, and poor inventory visibility can create problems that later appear to belong to transportation or warehousing.
A strong Order process asks whether the company has correctly understood what the customer wants and whether the business can realistically deliver what it has promised.
Important questions include:
- Is the order accurate?
- Is the product actually available?
- What delivery date can realistically be promised?
- Is the pricing correct?
- Are special customer requirements understood?
- Is the order prioritized correctly?
The cleaner the customer order is at the beginning, the easier execution becomes throughout the rest of the supply chain.
Source: Bring the Right Supply Into the Network
Source covers the activities associated with procuring, ordering, scheduling, receiving, and transferring the products and services needed by the supply chain.
Procurement discussions often focus heavily on purchase price, but a strong SCOR Supply Chain view goes much further. The supplier has to provide the right material, in the right quantity, at the right quality, at the right time, and with enough reliability that downstream operations can perform.
Consider two suppliers. Supplier A charges $9.50 per unit but requires a 16-week lead time, large minimum orders, and frequent expediting. Supplier B charges $10.25 but delivers reliably within four weeks and allows smaller replenishment quantities.
If procurement looks only at purchase price, Supplier A appears better. If the organization looks at inventory, working capital, premium freight, flexibility, service, and risk, the answer may be very different.
SCOR encourages leaders to evaluate sourcing as part of the entire supply chain rather than as an isolated purchasing activity.
Transform: Convert Inputs Into Customer Value
Transform is the current SCOR term replacing the traditional Make process. The newer term is broader because it includes production, assembly, disassembly, maintenance, repair, overhaul, and other activities that convert inputs into products or services.
The objective is to create what customers need while balancing quality, cost, capacity, flexibility, and speed. This is where materials, labor, equipment, information, and production schedules come together.
Transform activities can include:
- Production scheduling
- Manufacturing
- Assembly
- Testing
- Packaging
- Repair
- Refurbishment
- Remanufacturing
- Maintenance
A company may have excellent forecasts and sufficient raw materials but still fail to meet customer demand if Transform contains a critical bottleneck. A machine may be overloaded, changeovers may consume too much time, quality problems may create rework, or the production schedule may not match the real constraint.
This is why SCOR looks at the process as part of an interconnected system. Production performance matters because it affects inventory, fulfillment, customer service, revenue, and cash.
Fulfill: Turn the Order Into a Customer Experience
Fulfill covers the activities required to complete the customer order. ASCM includes areas such as scheduling delivery, picking, packing, shipping, assembling, installing, commissioning, and invoicing within this process.
This is where many upstream decisions become visible to the customer. Planning may have been excellent, suppliers may have delivered correctly, and production may have followed the schedule, but customers experience the supply chain through whether the right product arrives when promised and in the expected condition.
A strong Fulfill process connects:
- Inventory availability
- Warehouse operations
- Picking and packing
- Transportation
- Delivery commitments
- Documentation
- Invoicing
Fulfillment demonstrates why departmental metrics can be misleading. The warehouse might achieve excellent productivity while order accuracy deteriorates, or transportation may reduce freight cost while delivery performance suffers.
Customers experience the entire order, not the individual departments that touched it.
Return: Manage the Flow Back Through the Supply Chain
Return manages the reverse flow of goods, services, or components back through the supply chain. The current SCOR framework includes diagnosing condition, evaluating return eligibility, determining disposition, and potentially routing products back into Transform or other circular activities.
Returns should not be viewed simply as products moving in the wrong direction. They may still contain significant inventory, component, material, or financial value.
A Return process may include:
- Authorization
- Transportation
- Receiving
- Inspection
- Grading
- Repair
- Refurbishment
- Resale
- Recycling
- Disposal
This is particularly important as companies put more emphasis on reverse logistics, service parts, recommerce, sustainability, and circular supply chains.
A returned product is not automatically waste. SCOR gives organizations a framework for managing that reverse flow with the same discipline applied to forward logistics.
SCOR Is a Process Model, Not an Organization Chart
One of the most important ideas behind the SCOR Supply Chain framework is that it describes processes rather than departments. Supply chains operate horizontally across organizations even though companies are usually managed vertically by functions.
A customer order may touch sales, finance, planning, inventory, warehousing, transportation, and customer service. A supplier failure may involve procurement, quality, manufacturing, planning, logistics, and finance.
That means many supply chain problems live between departments.
SCOR provides a way to follow the process from beginning to end rather than stopping at functional boundaries. This can help identify poor handoffs, duplicated work, conflicting priorities, unclear ownership, and process gaps that would be difficult to see from one department alone.
A company can therefore use SCOR to ask a powerful question: how does value actually flow through the business from demand to supply to execution to customer?
The SCOR Levels: From Strategy to Detailed Execution
The current SCOR Digital Standard organizes processes into multiple levels. Orchestrate sits at Level 0, followed by the major Level-1 processes of Plan, Order, Source, Transform, Fulfill, and Return. Level 2 breaks those processes into major categories, while Level 3 provides more detailed process elements.
A simple way to understand the hierarchy is:
- Level 0: How do we orchestrate the overall supply chain?
- Level 1: Which major process are we examining?
- Level 2: Which category inside that process matters?
- Level 3: Which detailed process element is creating the result?
- Company-specific process: How do we actually perform that work inside our organization?
This structure is useful because executives and frontline teams need different levels of detail. An executive may need to know that fulfillment responsiveness is deteriorating, while a warehouse manager may need to determine whether the real cause is receiving, replenishment, picking, packing, or shipping.
SCOR allows both conversations to happen inside the same overall framework.
SCOR Is More Than a Process Map
SCOR would be useful if it did nothing more than organize supply chain processes, but the model goes much further. ASCM structures the current SCOR Digital Standard around Processes, Performance, Practices, and People, allowing organizations to connect how work is performed with how results are measured, which improvement practices may help, and what skills people need.
That creates a much more complete improvement system.
Processes describe what the organization does. Performance measures show how well those processes are working. Practices provide ideas for improving the processes, while People capabilities help ensure employees can execute the improved way of working.
This connection is critical because identifying a poor process is only the beginning. The organization still has to understand the performance gap, decide what should change, and build the capability required to sustain the improvement.
SCOR Performance: Measure the Supply Chain From Multiple Angles
The current SCOR Digital Standard organizes performance around three broader categories—Resilience, Economic, and Sustainability—and eight performance attributes. Those attributes are Reliability, Responsiveness, Agility, Cost, Profit, Assets, Environmental, and Social.
This balanced structure matters because supply chain performance cannot be reduced to one metric.
A company cannot simply minimize cost while ignoring customers. It cannot maximize inventory turns while creating constant stockouts, and it cannot achieve outstanding delivery service at any cost without eventually damaging profitability.
SCOR encourages organizations to look at several dimensions of performance together.
Reliability: Did We Do What We Promised?
Reliability focuses on whether the supply chain performs as expected. That includes delivering the right product, in the right quantity, at the right time, in the right condition, with the correct documentation.
One important SCOR measure is Perfect Customer Order Fulfillment, which evaluates whether customer orders meet those expectations.
Reliability is powerful because it forces teams to look at the whole customer transaction rather than one isolated KPI. An order that arrives on time but contains the wrong item is not perfect, and an order with the correct product but incorrect documentation is not perfect either.
The customer experiences the complete order, which is why reliability is one of the most useful end-to-end measures in supply chain management.
Responsiveness: How Quickly Can the Supply Chain Perform?
Responsiveness addresses the speed at which the supply chain completes customer-related activities. The SCOR Digital Standard uses Order Fulfillment Cycle Time as a key responsiveness measure.
Speed matters because long cycle times often require more inventory, create slower cash conversion, and make the organization less capable of responding to changing customer demand.
The goal, however, is not simply to make every process faster. The organization should understand where time is being consumed and whether that time actually creates value.
Waiting, queues, approvals, handoffs, batching, and poor information flow often create delays that customers would never willingly pay for.
Agility: How Well Can the Supply Chain Adapt?
Agility measures the ability to respond when conditions move away from the plan. ASCM connects agility with unplanned external events such as sudden demand changes, supplier failures, natural disasters, cyber events, financial disruption, and labor issues.
This makes agility increasingly important because efficiency alone does not guarantee resilience.
A supply chain may perform extremely well under normal conditions but fail badly when one supplier disappears or demand changes unexpectedly. SCOR encourages organizations to evaluate not only how efficiently the network performs today, but how well it can adapt when today’s assumptions stop being true.
Cost, Profit, and Assets: Connect Operations to Financial Results
The economic side of SCOR includes Cost, Profit, and Assets. These attributes help connect supply chain activity with financial performance, including total supply chain cost, cost of goods sold, profitability, cash-to-cash cycle time, fixed assets, and working capital.
This connection is essential because supply chain decisions eventually become financial results.
Inventory is working capital. Transportation affects margin. Supplier terms affect cash flow, while factory utilization affects fixed-asset productivity.
SCOR helps teams see that operational excellence is not only about moving material efficiently. It is also about using resources in ways that create economic value for the business.
Environmental and Social Performance: Expand the Definition of Performance
The current SCOR Digital Standard also incorporates Environmental and Social performance attributes. Environmental measures include areas such as materials, energy, water, greenhouse-gas emissions, and waste, while Social performance includes areas such as training and workforce-related measures.
This represents an important evolution in the model because modern supply chains are increasingly expected to consider more than service and cost.
Material consumption, waste, energy, sourcing practices, workforce capability, and sustainability are now part of how many organizations evaluate supply chain performance.
SCOR therefore provides a way to connect sustainability with everyday supply chain processes rather than treating it as something completely separate from operations.
Use Metrics to Diagnose, Not Just Report
One of the most useful ideas in SCOR is that metrics can be hierarchical. High-level performance measures can be supported by more detailed metrics that help explain why performance changed.
Suppose Perfect Customer Order Fulfillment is declining. Simply reporting that number every month does not solve anything.
The organization needs to determine whether orders are late, incomplete, damaged, incorrect, or poorly documented. From there, teams can investigate whether the underlying problem involves inventory, warehouse accuracy, transportation, production, or customer-order processing.
That is diagnostic measurement.
The purpose of a KPI is not only to tell leaders that something is wrong. The measure should help the organization understand where to look next.
SCOR Practices: Connect Problems With Better Ways of Working
Once a performance gap is identified, the organization needs to decide how the process should improve. SCOR includes practices that can help organizations evaluate approaches for strengthening supply chain performance.
This is important because improvement should not begin with random activity.
If inventory is high, the answer is not automatically “reduce inventory.” If service is poor, the answer is not automatically “add inventory.” Teams need to understand the root cause first and then select practices appropriate to the problem.
The framework encourages a disciplined sequence:
- Understand the process
- Measure performance
- Identify the gap
- Find the root cause
- Evaluate improvement practices
- Implement the change
- Measure the result
That sequence turns SCOR from a reference model into a practical improvement framework.
People: Processes Only Work When People Can Execute Them
Processes and technology receive a great deal of attention in supply chain transformation, but people capability is just as important. A beautifully designed process still fails if employees do not understand the work or have the skills required to execute it.
SCOR recognizes People as part of the broader framework, reinforcing the connection between process design and workforce capability.
This creates several practical questions for leaders:
- Do planners understand the decisions they are making?
- Do buyers understand total cost and supplier risk?
- Can warehouse teams identify process waste?
- Do managers understand the KPIs they own?
- Are employees trained to solve root causes rather than symptoms?
Improving a supply chain therefore means improving both the process and the people operating it.
A Simple SCOR Supply Chain Example
Imagine a company selling a popular household appliance.
Planning estimates how many units customers will require and compares that demand with available resources. Order captures what customers want, while Source obtains components from suppliers.
Transform converts those components into finished products. Fulfill picks, packs, ships, and invoices customer orders, while Return manages units that come back because of damage, defects, or customer preference.
Orchestrate sits across all of those activities by managing data, technology, risk, network design, performance, and overall supply chain strategy.
Now imagine customer service begins deteriorating.
SCOR gives the organization a structure for investigating why.
The problem could be poor demand planning, unreliable supply, insufficient production capacity, bad order information, weak warehouse execution, transportation delays, or a combination of several issues.
Instead of blaming one department, the company can follow the process across the entire system.
That is where SCOR becomes especially useful.
SCOR Helps Prevent Local Optimization
One of the most common supply chain problems occurs when each department improves its own KPI while the total system gets worse.
Procurement may buy larger quantities to obtain a lower unit price, increasing inventory and working capital. Manufacturing may increase batch sizes to improve equipment utilization, creating more finished-goods inventory.
Transportation may consolidate shipments to lower freight cost, while customer delivery slows down.
Every department can appear successful while customer service and cash flow deteriorate.
The SCOR Supply Chain model helps leaders look horizontally across those functions and evaluate the total flow instead of optimizing isolated departments.
The real question becomes whether the supply chain improved, not whether one department improved its scorecard.
SCOR Gives Everyone a Common Language
Supply chain problems become much harder when different teams use different definitions for the same activities and measures.
One organization may define on-time delivery differently from another. Procurement may calculate lead time one way while planning calculates it another way, and different business units may use different definitions for the same KPI.
SCOR provides standardized terminology that can reduce this confusion. The original SupplyChainToday page highlights standardization and improved communication as important benefits of the model, while ASCM continues to emphasize SCOR as a consistent process framework for assessment, improvement, and benchmarking.
Common definitions may sound simple, but they are essential.
It is difficult to improve performance when teams cannot agree on what the process is called, how the measure is calculated, or where one process ends and another begins.
How to Use SCOR Without Making It Complicated
SCOR can look intimidating when people first see the full framework. There are processes, levels, metrics, practices, terminology, and detailed definitions, but organizations do not need to implement everything at once.
A practical approach is to begin with a real business problem.
For example, suppose customer orders are frequently late.
The team could begin by asking:
- Which SCOR process contains the problem?
- What performance measure is deteriorating?
- Which detailed activities contribute to the result?
- What evidence identifies the root cause?
- Which improvement practice could address it?
- What skills or capabilities are missing?
- How will we know the change worked?
This keeps SCOR practical.
The framework becomes a map for solving problems rather than an academic exercise people have to memorize.
Start With the Customer
Another simple way to use SCOR is to begin with the outcome the customer cares about and work backward.
If customers care about reliable delivery, look at Perfect Customer Order Fulfillment. If responsiveness is the issue, examine Order Fulfillment Cycle Time.
Then move upstream through the processes that influence those results.
A fulfillment problem may actually begin in planning. A production shortage may begin in sourcing, while a sourcing problem may ultimately come from poor supplier strategy or risk management within Orchestrate.
Working backward helps teams avoid treating the symptom while missing the real cause.
Use SCOR to Connect Strategy With Daily Work
One of the greatest advantages of a structured model is its ability to connect high-level business goals with everyday operational activity.
Suppose leadership wants faster customer response.
That strategic objective can be connected to responsiveness metrics. Those metrics can then be connected to Order, Source, Transform, and Fulfill processes.
The organization can continue drilling downward until employees can see which specific activities affect the strategic outcome.
This creates alignment.
Instead of employees hearing an abstract objective such as “improve responsiveness,” they can see what needs to change in their part of the process and how the improvement contributes to the larger business goal.
Common SCOR Supply Chain Mistakes
One mistake is treating SCOR as a checklist. The model should help people understand and improve the supply chain, not become another documentation exercise.
Another mistake is trying to implement the entire framework at once. Supply chains are complex enough already, and the best place to start is usually with an important business problem or performance gap.
Other common mistakes include:
- Focusing on terminology instead of decisions
- Measuring too many metrics
- Ignoring process handoffs
- Optimizing departments instead of the whole system
- Benchmarking without understanding context
- Mapping processes without improving them
- Ignoring people and change management
SCOR creates a structure, but leaders still have to think.
A framework becomes valuable when it improves decisions, not when the organization can simply say that it uses the framework.
What Great SCOR Supply Chain Management Looks Like
Organizations using SCOR effectively do not necessarily talk about SCOR every day. The framework becomes part of the way they understand and improve the supply chain.
They know how major processes connect, which measures matter, where performance is weak, and what actions could improve the result.
A mature SCOR approach may include:
- Common process definitions
- End-to-end process ownership
- Balanced performance metrics
- Root-cause analysis
- Benchmarking
- Leading practices
- Clear capability requirements
- Continuous improvement
The organization uses the framework to create clarity.
That clarity helps teams stop arguing about whose department owns the problem and start understanding how the process produces the result.
The Business Impact of SCOR
The original SupplyChainToday page highlights visibility, efficiency, decision-making, and collaboration as benefits of the SCOR model. Those advantages come from something fundamental: SCOR provides structure for understanding a supply chain that might otherwise feel overwhelmingly complex.
When used well, the SCOR Supply Chain framework can help organizations:
- Improve process visibility
- Standardize terminology
- Identify performance gaps
- Improve cross-functional collaboration
- Connect KPIs with processes
- Diagnose root causes
- Benchmark performance
- Improve customer service
- Reduce waste and unnecessary cost
- Strengthen continuous improvement
The framework does not improve performance by itself.
Its value comes from helping people see the system clearly enough to improve it intelligently.
SCOR and Continuous Improvement Belong Together
SCOR should not be viewed as something an organization maps once and then places in a presentation.
Supply chains change continuously. Customers change, suppliers change, networks change, technology changes, regulations change, and processes that once worked well may eventually become constraints.
SCOR provides a stable structure for asking whether the system is still performing as intended.
Teams can measure performance, identify gaps, investigate processes, implement improvements, and then measure again.
That creates a continuous loop:
- Understand
- Measure
- Diagnose
- Improve
- Standardize
- Measure again
The framework becomes even more valuable when connected to Lean, Six Sigma, root-cause analysis, First Principles thinking, and other improvement approaches.
SCOR provides the map. Continuous Improvement helps the organization keep making the map work better.
Final Thought: SCOR Makes the Supply Chain Easier to Understand
Supply chain management can feel complicated because there are so many moving pieces. Demand, suppliers, inventory, factories, warehouses, transportation, customers, returns, technology, data, risk, sustainability, and finance all interact with one another.
The SCOR Supply Chain model does something extremely valuable: it gives those moving pieces structure.
It allows a professional on day one to understand the basic flow while giving an experienced leader a framework for analyzing performance across a complex global network. That combination is one reason SCOR has remained relevant while the model itself has continued to evolve.
The real lesson is not that everyone needs to memorize every SCOR process code or metric. The lesson is that supply chains become easier to improve when everyone shares a common way of describing what happens, measuring the result, and finding where the system needs to get better.
Start with the customer. Follow the flow. Understand the process. Measure what matters. Find the real cause of the gap and improve the system rather than simply pushing one department to work harder.
That is the practical value of the SCOR Supply Chain framework. It turns a complicated network of activities into a common language for understanding how the supply chain works today and how it can work better tomorrow.
Supply Chain Quotes
- “For much of Toyota’s history, we have ensured the quality and reliability of our vehicles by placing a device called an andon cord on every production line – and empowering any team member to halt production if there’s an assembly problem. Only when the problem is resolved does the line begin to move again.” ~ Akio Toyoda, CEO Toyota Motor Company.
- “If you don’t have an essential item that puts people into chaos. What happens if the coffee runs out in the morning? Simple but you get the picture.” ~ Dave Waters.
- “If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.” ~ Henry Ford, founder Ford Motor Company.
- “All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.” ~ Taiichi Ohno, father of Toyota Production System (TPS).
- “If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow.” ~ Phil Crosby.
- “Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.” ~ Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computer. Supply Chain Expert.
- “Supply chains are everywhere. From the biggest company in the world to running your household. We all have supply chain experience even if we don’t know it.” ~ Dave Waters.
- “Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity. “ ~ Sam Walton, founder of Walmart.
- “I say an hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour out of the entire system. I say an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is worthless. Bottlenecks govern both throughput and inventory.” ~ Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal.
- “You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Supply Chain Information.
- Apple’s Global Supply Chain Management Lessons from Steve Jobs | iPhone Logistics.
- Banana Supply Chain.
- Best Continuous Improvement Quotes
- Book Reviews: “Made in America” by Sam Walton, founder of Walmart.
- Can delivery drones and robots make it in “the last mile”?
- Coca Cola Supply Chain.
- Exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook.
- How to Eliminate Cost in the Supply Chain.
- How to Get a Job in Supply Chain Management.
- Pepsi Supply Chain Case Study with Solution.
- Skechers distribution center.
- SCM Collaboration on Social Media
- SCM Resources by Topic and Supplier
- Supply Chain Key Concepts
- Supply Chain Inventory Optimization.
- What is an Agile Supply Chain Strategy?
- What is Supply Chain Management?
Continuous Improvement Training and Research
Master Public Speaking: The Secrets to Become a Great Speaker.
First Principles Supply Chain Series: Question Assumptions, Rebuild Better Systems.
Master Lean Manufacturing: Turning Waste Into Competitive Advantage.
Quality & Continuous Improvement: From Inspection to Built-In Excellence.
Lean Manufacturing | A pursuit of perfection.
What is Just in Time (JIT): Smartest Production System in The World
“Supply Chain is simple when broken into small pieces. But breaking it into understandable small pieces can be the difficult part.” ~EverythingSupplyChain.com

Supply Chain Experience: Plan a meal for 10 people. Everyone must get the food they want and you can’t run out. You have a $100 budget. Now plan and execute.

Supply Chain is like nature, it is all around us.

“Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity.” ~Sam Walton

“Let us never negotiatie out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” ~John F. Kennedy

“The business schools reward complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.” ~Warren Buffett
