Executive Thought Leadership

This month I’m pleased to share with you advancements in the field of supply-chain management.

In this issue of the Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly, you’ll hear from Carl Redfield, Senior Vice President of Manufacturing and Logistics at Cisco. In his article he discusses the evolution of supply-chain management and recent technology advancements that are providing true productivity gains. The acceptance of new approaches to supply-chain strategies and the introduction of new technologies have vastly altered traditional supply-chain management. Carl highlights Cisco eHub, an Internet-based network that links Cisco with its contract manufacturers, distributors, and suppliers to streamline all supply-chain information, bringing a new level of efficiency and improvements to this critical business function.

In the Guru Q&A section, you'll hear from Hau Lee, Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and founding and current director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum. Professor Lee discusses the key challenges that businesses face today in managing their supply chains, as well as how new real-time technologies and the use of the Internet can dramatically improve efficiency by better coordinating demand with supply-chain management systems.

Thought Leadership

The last two decades have shown us that adoption of leading-edge supply-chain technologies is a matter of survival. Increasingly, leading companies in every industry, from Wal-Mart to General Motors, require their supply-chain partners to tie into their own systems or meet standards for delivery and accuracy based on the new capabilities and requirements of these systems. The new supply chain allows for very small time and inventory margins by providing extremely tight integration that treats the outsourced supply chain as an integrated whole. Carl Redfield, senior vice president manufacturing and logistics at Cisco Systems, discusses the new supply-chain and technology-enabled collaboration in this article.

Guru Q&A

Hau L. Lee is the Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Sequoia Capital Professor of the Department of Management Science and Engineering, and Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Professor Lee has consulted extensively in the private sector, and is a co-founder of NON-STOP Solutions, a company that provides demand chain optimization services to industry. In addition, he is on the board of several Internet and supply-chain software companies.

Cisco: What is the single most important cause of inefficiencies in the supply chain?

Lee: I would have to say the lack of visibility. This deficiency can be in the form of missing information, poor communication, reluctance to share information, and simply wrong data. Inadequate visibility typically occurs in the organizational, geographical, and time spaces. In the organizational space, we do not have visibility across different organizations (which can be internal as well as external). In the geographical space, we do not have visibility into what happens at different locations of the supply chain. In the time space, we do not have visibility into what has happened in the past.

More of Lee's reflections can be found in From the Experts section of the Business Industries and Solutions Web site.

I hope you enjoy this issue of the Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly .