216 March 2021
KEARNEY
“ No amount of effort
will protect you
against every shock.
That's the first thing
we tell people; you
can’t protect against
everything. So, what
are the choices you
want to make?”
SUKETU GANDHI
PARTNER AND GLOBAL PRODUCT
LEADER, DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN & PLAN,
KEARNEYLastly, Gandhi points out the maturement
of risk tolerance, a factor Sense and Pivot
looks at, shifting from implicit to explicit.Sense & Pivot
Kearney started on the Sense and Pivot
journey almost three years ago after
spotting the trends around the difficulty of
forecasting, the inflexibility of distribution
centres, manufacturing facilities and
transportation networks.
However, there was still resistance to
change. Ghandi says, “What COVID did was
fundamentally accelerate the trend. What
we thought would take another year to
two years all of a sudden just came to life.
It’s what I call the shift left phenomenon;
years became months and months
became weeks.”
Just how unpredictable the world can
be was a hard-earned lesson. Supply chains
quickly realised they need to adapt and
perform against plan despite the business
challenges brought on by the disruptions
and the limitations that lay within the supply
chain. Sense and Pivot helps organisations to
mitigate the impacts of risks such as extreme
weather, geopolitics and unpredictable
changes in consumer demand, creating a
dynamic, highly responsive and resilient
supply chain.
Ghandi says the companies should be
asking is if they are set up to sense the
right information in order to pivot assets.
Real-time information can be pulled from
a myriad of resources such as business
partners, social media, manufacturing
facilities (for machine capacity or handling
times), or even point of sale information.
This information can then trigger an
action or inform decision making. The
trick is in aligning the right data to the
companies goals.