A selection of talks on Technology & Operations

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0:00
Hello, my name is Alan Braithwaite. I'm going to talk to you about managing complexity in the supply chain. But first, let me introduce myself. I'm the chairman of LCP Consulting, Design Specialist, Supply Chain and Logistics Consultancy, and I'm also a visiting professor at Cranfield School of Management. I've been working around the supply chain for the last 30 years. I started in 1979 in consultancy, and I've seen the whole topic, and the subject area develop from that time.
0:37
The agenda I've put together starts with the concept of complexity, what that means, and how that idea has developed over recent years, and then to expand that into how it applies to business and the supply chain. From that, I'm going to introduce eight dimensions of supply chain complexity, which we've identified, and which cover the complete spectrum of how complexity impacts the company's operations and its supply chain. If you've got eight dimensions of complexity, you need to find out, and discover how to measure complexity against those dimensions, and I'll introduce some tools and techniques which enable you to understand the implications of complexity, and start to begin to think about the strategies that you can adopt to mitigate. One of the big strategies or one of the big insights, I should say that you can apply, having measured complexity, is to bring that together into what we call cost-to-serve, and I described that as the complexity solver. Having understood the implications and the impact of complexity and how that fits against the specific business, I'll introduce actions specifically, that enable companies to manage or master complexity in their supply chains. Then I'll close by looking at the bottom line benefits of business of taking actions to manage the supply chain.