Don Hicks: Design vs. Planning, the 2024 Election, and Advice for SC Executives
The following is an excerpt from a podcast interview from Supply Chain Connect
Supply Chain Connect:
It’s a very important time to have supply chain design questions answered for your organization. I think throughout the COVID pandemic, the last couple of years, it was a scramble for survival. Companies were focused on short-term solutions. Maybe this last year, albeit cautiously, some companies started to look ahead. But what does 2024 look like?
Don Hicks:
What you said was, “They need answers to their supply chain design.” They’re going to “solve it.” I want to throw down the gauntlet right now to redefine what we think about when we think about design.
Supply chain design is a long-term capability that companies get to deal with anything that the environment in the world throws their way. Supply chain environment is a lot like the weather: If you don’t like the situation now, wait until tomorrow and it’ll change.
And the fact is, dealing with big changes—it’s a permanent need. You can’t execute and plan your way out of a crappy supply chain design. You’re always going to get these big existential changes. Design is a capability, and its people and technology. And if you have that, you can look ahead when you can, and get in front of things by changing the design and making redesigns.
We are in an interesting stretch right now where supply chain executives remember we were just in a pandemic, but now we’ve settled in; we’re looking at the changes in the environment—and they’re massive—and we see that our supply chains are not set up for the situation we’re now facing.
So yeah, we’re ramping up. It’s going to be a big year for supply chain design, but it’s not the end. Because as soon as we get these things sorted out, we’re going to get handed other changes.
This is a moment to decide: Are you a dinosaur or are you a survivor? Because the survivors will have the capability to deal with big changes better than the competitors.