What Is Practical?

Are you asking yourself any of these questions?

• “Where should a distribution center be?”
• “How many should we have?”
• “How big should they be?”
• “Should we even have distribution centers?”
• “Are my distribution costs too high?”
• “I don’t understand our transportation / warehousing contracts.”
• “Are we better off with a fleet?”
• “Should we use asset based or non asset based carriers?”
• “Am I using the right carriers?”
• “Should we manage the day to day operations, or let a 3PL run the show?”
• “How much inventory should we hold?”
• “Where should we hold it?”
• “What should our inventory turns be?”
• “I can’t get answers quickly from my team.”
• “We can’t make new changes happen - we don’t have enough people.”
• “Does my team really know what they are doing?”
• “If (fill in the blank) leaves will we be OK? Who can really do that job?”
• “Should we be doing that in the first place?”
• “I don’t think we got the payback out of the current system. Did we?
• “Do we really need the systems? Where is the real payback?”
• “We don’t have the capital for new systems.”
• “What does the new system not let us do?”
• “Why can’t we get things done right the first time!”
• “Who should I trust?”

If you are not, perhaps you should...

These questions, and many others are what faces our clients every day.
Some clients are not even asking the questions.
These are examples of strategic questions
They are the origin - the starting point for the development of practical solutions.

What is Practical? Here are some thoughts...

We understand theory. Actually, we understand many Supply Chain Management (SCM) theories. Some we believe in, some we don’t. We think some SCM theories are nonsense and some are fundamental.

Most of all, we understand that not all theories apply to all situations.

Why? Because we are active Supply Chain Management practitioners with the experience of applying theory to practice. We have seen “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of how theory fails to address the unexpected, the undisciplined, the inconvenient truth of complex operations. Understanding what theory to pay attention to - and what to discard - is being practical.

Asking the right questions is practical.

We have asked these same questions in our careers as operators. We ask the questions that are on the minds of our clients. Sometimes surprised to hear us ask the question that they are thinking. Sometimes surprised to hear us ask a question they have not thought of.

The reason we ask these questions is that we "have been there, done that", and collected the "t-shirts", including the scars of success. We have made mistakes as operators and learned the bitter lessons of those mistakes. We watched other operators make mistakes and have learned from their bitter lessons. We ask the right questions because we are practitioners; we have “stood in the shoes” of our clients in our career and have a good idea what they are thinking and feeling. We learned from our mistakes and became better operators, became better leaders.

Learning from Mistakes is Practical.

Are we infallible? No. But we don’t make many mistakes. When we do make a mistake – we own up to it. And we always learn from it.

Sure, we could speculate and develop abstract models of how things should perform - and still not deliver the solution that works for our clients. Our practical training and experience leads us to taking action, by listening and then thinking of the right solution to help our clients take action. We are action oriented, concrete. We are here and now, working to develop a better future for our clients.

We keep “our saws sharp” through research to learn from the success and failures of other practitioners in industry. We are constantly learning and constantly teaching, “paying forward” and “paying back”. We are committed to invest and participate in our professional “community” though our involvement in the premiere professional Supply Chain and Logistics Management organizations. We speak and publish as our contribution to the state of the art.

Being Ethical is Practical.

Our ethics are practical. We work with suppliers, carriers, 3PL service providers for our clients.

Suppliers, carriers, 3PL service providers are our clients too. But we never accept finder fees or commissions from suppliers, carriers or service providers. We are independent; we work for our clients assure that we recommend the “best” overall solution to the client, unencumbered. How could a client trust us if we did accept commissions or finder's fees? If we have a relationship with a supplier - where they have been "our client" we make that fact known.

Our mission and purpose are to bring to our clients value they will not get anywhere else. If we think that the client would get better value by working with another group or directly with the provider or supplier on their own; we will make that recommendation. How many other consultants will do that?

Would you like years of practical experience, gained in the trenches of operations and
as leaders of small and large strategic operations on your next project?
We have been there, done that, and have the scars of the efforts to show for it.

Do you know the 10 Most Important Key Performance Indicators
for Measuring a Healthy Supply Chain?
Go to our Library and Check out one of our reports.