Posted On June 25, 2018

If it hasn’t already, your executive team needs to rethink the way it thinks about supply chain management. Supply chains long ago stopped being about the way you send parts and products to customers and end users. Instead, supply chains are sources of strategic advantage—and thinking about how to maximize strategic advantage is a responsibility for senior leadership, and not “just” functional departments—including your shipping department.

(We put “just” in quote marks because the team here at Flat World Holdings is fortunate to work with strategic, visionary shipping managers who understand just how important an efficient supply chain is to their company’s success.)

Why is your supply chain important to your company’s strategy, and why should it be important to your executive team?

The term “Flat World,” at least in terms of supply chains, was traditionally used to talk about the way globalization and technology reduced trade and production barriers between countries—but the concept of a flat world is about much more than that. In a flat world, customers expect their order to arrive as fast as possible. That’s true for the mom or dad ordering back-to-school clothes online, and it’s true for the industrial consumer purchasing heavy manufacturing equipment.

Your customers want your product, they want it now, and they want to pay as little as possible for that product. In today’s market, getting products into the hands of customers reliably, fast, and at a low cost is the foundation of every successful corporate strategy. When combined with visibility and efficiency, those three elements (speed, reliability, and low cost) are also the foundation of your supply chain strategy.

In other words, supply chain strategy is company strategy—and company strategy demands the attention of company leadership.

Apple went from being a struggling computer maker in the mid 90s to the world’s richest company when it combined market-leading design with one of the world’s best managed supply chains. Walmart redefined retailing when it redefined supply chain management. Amazon is basically a giant supply chain looking for a constant competitive advantage through better technology.

Large companies like Apple, Walmart, and Amazon long ago realized that the road to market domination went through aggressive, strategic supply chain management.

If your company wants to remain competitive in an economy increasingly dominated by large companies like the ones mentioned above, it needs to do the same. Supply chain management needs to be elevated beyond your shipping department and become a strategic focus for your executive team.

The Flat World Holdings family of companies is here to help you do that.

Our teams at Flat World Supply Chain, Flat World Hospitality Management, Ram International, Ram Custom Crating, and Prologue Technology are your strategic partners and can help you navigate a fast-changing world where success (and sometimes even survival) depends on having a supply chain built on a foundation of excellence.

For the world’s most successful companies, strategic supply chain management is their strategy. It’s a core focus of their executive team.

And it should be the same for your company.