According to a recent study carried out by Spend Matters, deficits in leadership within the increasingly complicated world of modern logistics can be reduced by customisation.
Pierre Mitchell, chief research officer of Spend Matters, writes in his report Customising Your Supply Chain: Why, How, and "The Culture of Me":
"Companies are obviously going global, but are tailoring their products and services to local requirements. A culture of 'me' is tied to a physical local culture as much as it’s tailored to online cultures.
"The food supply chain is an obvious example here. With a 4x projected expected growth in global food consumption (an estimated three billion more middle class consumers will enter the global marketplace by 2030), local supply will become a key part of the solution. One could say the same for additive manufacturing, the DIY movement, and other similar trends."
Mitchell elucidates also in his paper the importance of grappling for ownership of mobile operating systems, and acquiring detailed information of consumers' movements and habits.
The question of procurement, of course, is always pivotal in any supply chain, whether the chain be enormous and intricate, or more basic and old-school.
He writes "So, what’s the answer? You already know the answer. It’s mass customization (but you don’t have to call it that – it’ll be our little secret)! It means the industrialisation of procurement services and applying the mass customization best practices from the physical supply chain to the 'supply services' value chain.
It means offering broader and deeper supply management services to the enterprise (and to customers and even suppliers) at basically the same level of funding. Doing so requires better demand/customer management, better explicit design of your services, and better/safer tapping of supply markets (the reason why you exist) for creating this advantage."
© 2014 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article written by Peter Donnelly
