"Without the good costs in the supply chain, there are no sales! That's why companies need to significantly expand their competence in supply chain management," says Daniel Schmidt, new Director Education & Research at PMI.
This statement is my personal insight after 15 years of industry experience along the entire value chain in different company sizes: in global corporations, in medium-sized companies, but also in start-up environments.
The costs caused by a supply chain are at least as important in determining gross profit as the revenues generated by sales. Although, many companies are still too sales-focused in the way they structure their organisation and communication: Revenue is "king" and costs are seen as "evil". The functions in a company that generate revenue get a hearing and visibility and are always represented at C-level, often even disproportionately. Unfortunately, this is often not the case for the cost-generating functions: the entire supply chain. Sure, there is a COO now and then, and of course always a CFO, but is real supply chain competence present at this level?
Yet, without the good supply chain costs, there would be no product itself, no delivery to the customer through logistics or even the ability to withstand unpredictable events and develop resilience in its supply chain. The realisation that costs in the right place in the supply chain are a good thing and secure or even promote sales is thus unfortunately often absent and does not receive any praise.
Only a supply chain team that is very well trained and present across the entire organisational hierarchy can change this: cross-functional understanding combined with multi-layered thinking. This means building a strong understanding of the flow of information and all the necessary data, for the physical movement of goods and the mapping of this on the financial side. This allows the value propositions of the good costs to be clearly highlighted, while also identifying and eliminating the actual bad costs.
Coming from an engineering background, I started learning about the challenges of supply chains holistically 10 years ago. In order to fulfil my roles, I started with the APICS certificate trainings CSCP and CPIM and started freelancing with my first trainings at PMI already five years ago. My ever-increasing interest in supply chain management also led me to the Kühne Logistic University for an Executive MBA with subsequent part-time teaching there. The SCOR-P certification is currently my last step in further education, with which I would like to move further from understanding into the segmentation and holistic process design of supply chains. I am looking forward to finding out what my next training will be.
I can only encourage anyone working in supply chains to embrace the constant knowledge and experience challenges and make continuous learning an integral part of their job. In all the roles I have had the opportunity to get to know, nowhere do I see such ever-increasing complexity as in supply chain management. And that requires continuous training and breaking out of one's own comfort zone!
At the moment, however, my first priority is to keep my job and family in balance. After my induction at PMI and parental leave following the birth of our second son, I am now officially taking over from Stefan Hoogervorst as Director Education and Research this year. The developments during his time at PMI are starting points for me: I want to continue to address the issues of our clients that concern supply chain professionals and create learning environments for the professional development of all roles involved in supply chains. In these learning environments, not only theory should be learned, but also practice should always be made tangible. We therefore continue to rely on our great concept with practice-proven lecturers from industry and business, globally recognised certification standards and the use of supply chain simulations with different learning focuses. In this way, we can train the supply chain employees of tomorrow today and guide them to act competently and entrepreneurially in one of the most complex functions of their company.
I am looking forward to this great challenge, the team of PMI and a continued good cooperation with our customers and partners!
