Category Archives: Innovation

The Connected, Intelligent, Automated Industry 4.0 Supply Chain

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ASQ’s March Influential Voices Roundtable asks this question: “Investopedia defines end-to-end supply chain (or ‘digital supply chain’) as a process that refers to the practice of including and analyzing each and every point in a company’s supply chain – from sourcing and ordering raw materials to the point where the good reaches the end consumer. Implementing this practice can increase process speed, reduce waste, and decrease costs.

In your experience, what are some best practices for planning and implementing this style of supply chain to ensure success?“

Supply chains are the lifeblood of any business, impacting everything from the quality, delivery, and costs of a business’s products and services to customer service and satisfaction to ultimately profitability and return on assets.

Stank, T., Scott, S. & Hazen, B. (2018, April). A SAVVY GUIDE TO THE DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN: HOW TO EVALUATE AND LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY TO BUILD A SUPPLY CHAIN FOR THE DIGITAL AGE. Whitepaper, Haslam School of Business, University of Tennessee.

Industry 4.0 enabling technologies like affordable sensors, more ubiquitous internet connectivity and 5G networks, and reliable software packages for developing intelligent systems have started fueling a profound digital transformation of supply chains. Although the transformation will be a gradual evolution, spanning years (and perhaps decades), the changes will reduce or eliminate key pain points:

  • Connected: Lack of visibility keeps 84% of Chief Supply Chain Officers up at night. More sources of data and enhanced connectedness to information will alleviate this issue.
  • Intelligent: 87% of Chief Supply Chain Officers say that managing supply chain disruptions proactively is a huge challenge. Intelligent algorithms and prescriptive analytics can make this more actionable.
  • Automated: 80% of all data that could enable supply chain visibility and traceability is “dark” or siloed. Automated discovery, aggregation, and processing will ensure that knowledge can be formed from data and information.

Since the transformation is just getting started, best practices are few and far between — but recommendations do exist. Stank et al. (2018) created a digital supply chain maturity rubric, with highest levels that reflect what they consider recommended practices. I like these suggestions because they span technical systems and management systems:

  • Gather structured and unstructured data from customers, suppliers, and the market using sensors and crowdsourcing (presumably including social media)
  • Use AI & ML to “enable descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive insights simultaneously” and support continuous learning
  • Digitize all systems that touch the supply chain: strategy, planning, sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, collaboration, and customer service
  • Add value by improving efficiency, visibility, security, trust, authenticity, accessibility, customization, customer satisfaction, and financial performance
  • Use just-in-time training to build new capabilities for developing the smart supply chain

One drawback of these suggestions is that they provide general (rather than targeted) guidance.

A second recommendation is to plan initiatives that align with your level of digital supply chain maturity. Soosay & Kannusamy (2018) studied 360 firms in the Australian food industry and found four different stages. They are:

  • Stage 1 – Computerization and connectivity. Sharing data across they supply chain ecosystem requires that it be stored in locations that are accessible by partners. Cloud-based systems are one option. Make sure authentication and verification are carefully implemented.
  • Stage 2 – Visibility and transparency. Adding new sensors and making that data accessible provides new visibility into the supply chain. Key enabling technologies include GPS, time-temperature integrators and data loggers.
  • Stage 3 – Predictive capability. Access to real-time data from supply chain partners will increase the reliability and resilience of the entire network. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and radio frequency (RFID) tagging are enablers at this stage.
  • Stage 4 – Adaptability and self-learning. At this stage, partners plan and execute the supply chain collaboratively. Through Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), responsibility for replenishment can even be directly assumed by the supplier.

Traceability is also gaining prominence as a key issue, and permissioned blockchains provide one way to make this happen with sensor data and transaction data. Recently, the IBM Food Trust has demonstrated the practical value provided by the Hyperledger blockchain infrastructure for this purpose. Their prototypes have helped to identify supply chain bottlenecks that might not otherwise have been detected.

What should you do in your organization? Any way to enhance information sharing between members of the supply chain ecosystem — or more effectively synthesize and interpret it — should help your organization shift towards the end-to-end vision. Look for opportunities in both categories.

References for Connected, Intelligent, Automated stats:
  1. IBM. (2018, February). Global Chief Supply Chain Officer Study. Available from this URL
  2. Geriant, J. (2015, October). The Changing Face of Supply Chain Risk Management. SCM World.
  3. IBM & IDC. (2017, March). The Thinking Supply Chain. Available from this URL

Designing Experiences for Authentic Engagement: The Design for STEAM Canvas

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As Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation efforts bear their first fruits, capabilities, business models, and the organizations that embody them are transforming. A century ago, we thought of organizations as machines to be rigidly designed and controlled. In the latter part of the 20th century, organizations were thought of as knowledge to be cultivated, shared, and expanded. But “as intelligent systems gain traction, we are once again at a crossroads – where organizations must create complete and meaningful experiences” for their customers, stakeholders, and employees.

Read our new paper in the STEAM Journal

How do you design those complete, meaningful, and radically engaging experiences? To provide a starting point, check out “Design for Steam: Creating Participatory Art with Purpose” by my former student Nick Kamienski and me. It was just published today by the STEAM Journal.

“Participatory Art” doesn’t just mean creating things that are pretty to look at in your office lobby or tradeshow booth. It means finding ways to connect with your audience in ways that help them find meaning, purpose, and self-awareness – the ultimate ingredient for authentic engagement.

Designing experiences to make this happen is challenging, but totally within reach. Learn more in today’s new article!

Lack of Alignment is an Organizational Disease. Here are the Symptoms.

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Streamlines on a field. Created using the pracma package in R.

Like a champion rowing team, your organization needs to make sure everyone is working together, engaged in synchronized work and active collaboration, and not working at cross-purposes.

But like risk management, working on alignment can seem like a luxury. No one really has time to slow down and make sure everyone’s moving in the same direction. And besides, alignment just happens naturally if each functional area knows what they’re supposed to be working on… right?

Neither of these statements are, of course, true. Synchronizing people and processes – and making sure they’re aware of the needs and desires of real customers instead of cardboard personas – takes dedicated effort and a commitment from senior leaders. There are other critical impacts too: lack of alignment negatively impacts not only project outcomes – but also professional relationships and the bottom line.

from https://goo.gl/2iTKfg

An Example of Diagnosing Misalignment

Although alignment is a many-to-many problem, and requires you to look at relationships between people in all your functional areas, a January 2018 survey from Altify examined one part of the organizational puzzle: alignment between sales and marketing. This is a big one, because sales teams use marketing materials to understand and sell the product or service your company offers. Their survey of 422 enterprise-level executives and sales leaders showed that:

  • 74% of marketers think they understood customer needs, but only 44% of sales people in their organizations agreed
  • 71% of marketers think sales and marketing are aligned, but only 59% of sales people in their organizations agreed

These differences may seem small, but they reveal a lack of alignment between sales and marketing. One group thinks they “get it” – while people in the other group are just shaking their heads.

Symptoms of Misalignment

…include things like:

  • Vague Feelings of Fear. Your organization has a strategic plan (knows WHAT it wants to do), but there is little to no coordination regarding HOW people across the organization will accomplish strategic objectives. You know what KPIs you’re supposed to deliver on, but you don’t know how exactly you’re supposed to work with anything in your power or control to “move the needle.”
  • Ivory Tower Syndrome. You’re in a meeting and get the visceral sense that things aren’t clear, or that different people have different expectations for a project or initiative. But you’re too nervous or uncertain to ask for clarification – or maybe you do ask, but you get an equally unclear answer. Naturally, you assume that everyone in the room is smarter than you (particularly the managers) so you shut up and hope that it makes sense later. The reality is that you may be picking up on a legitimate problem that’s going to be problematic for the organization later on.
  • Surprises. A department committed you to a task, but you weren’t part of that decision. Once you find out about it, the task just may not get done. Alternatively, you’ll have to adjust your workload and reset expectations with the stakeholders who will now be disappointed that you can’t meet their needs according to the original schedule. Or maybe work evenings and weekends to get the job done on time. Either way, it’s not pleasant for anyone.
  • Emergencies. How often are you called on to respond to something that’s absolutely needed by close of business today? How often are you expected to drop everything and take care of it? How often do you have to work nights and weekends to make sure you don’t fall behind?
  • Lead Balloons. In this scenario, key stakeholders are called into projects at the 11th hour, when they are unable to guide or influence the direction of an initiative. The initiative becomes a “dead man walking” that’s doomed to an untimely end, but since the organization has sunk time and effort into it, people will push ahead anyway.
  • Cut Off at the Pass. Have you ever been working on a project and find out – somewhere in the middle of doing it – that some other person or team has been working on the same thing? Or maybe they’ve been working on a different project, but it’s ultimately at cross purposes with yours. Whatever way this situation works out, your organization ends up with a pile of waste and potential rework.
  • Not Writing Things Down.You have to make sure everyone is literally on the same page, seeing the world in a similar enough way to know they are pursuing the same goals and objectives. If you don’t write things down, you may be at the mercy of cognitive biases later. How do you know that your goals and objectives are aligned with your overall company strategy? Can you review written minutes after key meetings? Are your organization’s strategic initiatives written and agreed to by decision makers? Do you implement project charters that all stakeholders have to sign off on before work can commence? What practices do you use to get everyone on the same page?

How do you fix it?

That’s the subject for more blog posts that will be coming this spring – as well as what causes misalignment in the first place (hint: it’s individual behaviors on an organizational scale). The good news is – misalignment can be fixed, and the degree of alignment can be measured and continuously improved. Sign up to follow this blog so you don’t miss the rest of the story.

What other symptoms of misalignment have you experienced?

Make Strategic Alignment Actionable with Baldrige

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It can be difficult to focus on strategy when your organization has to comply with standards and regulations. Tracking and auditing can be tedious! If you’re a medical device manufacturer, you may need to maintain ISO 13485 compliance to participate in the supply chain. At the same time, you’ve got to meet all the requirements of 21 CFR 820. You’ve also got to remember other regulations that govern production and postmarket. (To read more about the challenges, check out Wienholt’s 2016 post.) There’s a lot to keep track of!

But strategy is important. Alignment is even more important! And in my opinion, the easiest way to improve alignment and get “Big Q” quality is to use the Baldrige Excellence Framework. It was developed by the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, and is administered by NIST.

In Is Good, Good Enough for You? Taking the Next Step After ISO 9001:2015, former Baldrige Program Executive Director Harry Hertz outlines similarities and differences between ISO 9001:2015 and Baldrige. After examining complements, Harry shows how Baldrige helps organizations grow beyond the conformance mindset:

I have not shared all the commonalities of or differences between ISO 9001:2015 and the Baldrige Excellence Framework. Instead, I have tried to show the organizational possibilities of building on conformity assessment to establish a holistic approach for achieving excellence in every dimension of organizational performance today, with a look to the strategic imperatives and opportunities for the future. Baldrige helps an organization take this journey with a focus on process (55% of the scoring rubric) and results (45% of the rubric), recognizing that great processes are only valuable if they yield the complete set of results that lead to organizational sustainability… I encourage organizations that have not gone beyond conformity to take the next step in securing your future.

Read More Here! –>

Engagement: Why Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be Bad

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Engagement is a goal for many organizations. In the January 2018 issue of Forbes, it’s described as a hallmark of successful business, a cultural cornerstone that reduces the risk of turnover while enhancing product quality, process quality, and customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, the same story also cites a Gallup poll from 2017 that found only 32% of workers are engaged — “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.” The majority are disengaged, a problem that management consultant and bestselling author Tom Peters has also noted.

When developing strategies for engagement, though, it’s important to remember that engagement, too, can go wrong. Enthusiasm for sports teams or political parties can become so driven by passion that judgment is clouded, and intense engagement in online social groups communities of practice can devolve into anger and name calling. Trolls on Twitter, for example, are highly engaged — but this is clearly not the kind of behavior organizations would ideally like to model or promote.

Cult members are also typically highly committed and engaged — in the most extreme cases, this engagement can be life-or-death. Heaven’s Gate in 1997, and Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in Guyana in 1978, are two of the more tragic examples.

How can an organization protect against “bad engagement”? Evan Czaplicki (creator of the programming language Elm) reflected on this problem in the open source software development community in this amazing hour captured on YouTube. For years, open source has been plagued by highly engaged community members who interact with one another unconstructively, ultimately damaging the feelings of trust and cohesion that would help community members meet their goals.

Some of his recommendations to promote “good engagement” by steering away from the bad include:

  • Limiting the number of characters people have to respond with
  • Limiting the types of interactions that are possible, e.g. upvoting or downvoting content
  • Making it possible for people to express intent with their statements or comments
  • Helping people identify and communicate their priorities as part of the exchange (e.g. simplicity vs. extensibility, freedom vs. community building)

For more hints and tips, be sure to check out Evan’s presentation.

 

Additional Reading:

Czaplicki, E. (2018, September 27-28). The Hard Parts of Open Source. Strange Loop Conference. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA&t=3s

Kappel, M. (2018, January 4). How To Establish A Culture Of Employee Engagement. Forbes. Available from https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2018/01/04/how-to-establish-a-culture-of-employee-engagement/#6ddb58de8dc4

 

Too Much Engagement Can Be Bad

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Engagement is a goal for many organizations. Sometimes this means customer engagement — other times, employee engagement — typically, both.

In the January 2018 issue of Forbes, engagement is described as a hallmark of successful business, a cultural cornerstone that reduces the risk of turnover while enhancing product quality, process quality, and customer satisfaction.

Unfortunately, the same story also cites a Gallup poll from 2017. It found only 32% of workers are engaged — “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.” The majority are disengaged, a problem that management consultant and bestselling author Tom Peters has also noted.

When developing strategies for engagement, though, it’s important to remember that engagement can go wrong. Enthusiasm for sports teams or political parties can become so driven by passion that judgment is clouded. Intense participation in online social groups or communities of practice can devolve into anger and name calling. Trolls on Twitter, for example, are highly engaged — but this is clearly not the kind of behavior organizations would ideally like to model or promote.

Cult members are also typically highly committed and engaged — in the most extreme cases, this engagement can be life-or-death. Heaven’s Gate in 1997 — and Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in Guyana in 1978 — are two of the more tragic examples.

How can an organization protect against “bad engagement”? Evan Czaplicki (creator of the programming language Elm) reflected on this problem in the open source software development community in this amazing hour captured on YouTube. For years, open source has been plagued by highly engaged community members who beat each other up online, scare away new contributors, and ultimately damage the trust and cohesion that would help community members meet their goals.

Some of Czaplicki’s recommendations to promote “good engagement”  include:

  • Limiting the number of characters people have to respond to each other with using text
  • Limiting the types of interactions that are possible, e.g. upvoting or downvoting content
  • Making it possible for people to express intent with their statements or comments
  • Helping people identify and communicate priorities (e.g. simplicity vs. extensibility, freedom vs. community building)

For more hints and tips, be sure to check out Evan’s presentation. THE WHOLE HOUR IS WONDERFUL. Do it now.

Additional Reading:

Czaplicki, E. (2018, September 27-28). The Hard Parts of Open Source. Strange Loop Conference. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA&t=3s

Kappel, M. (2018, January 4). How To Establish A Culture Of Employee Engagement. Forbes. Available from https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2018/01/04/how-to-establish-a-culture-of-employee-engagement/#6ddb58de8dc4

Radziwill, N. The Key to Engagement is Narrative.

The Achilles Heel of Customer Journey Mapping

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Journeying through western Wyoming in August 2011. Image Credit: me.

Achilles was that guy in Greek mythology whose mother, when he was born, wanted to protect him soooo much that she held him by the heel and dipped him in the power-giving waters of the River Styx — making him bullet proof (and much more; no bullets then), except at the heel, because for some reason she didn’t think about just dunking him a few inches deeper. Maybe she didn’t want to get her hand wet? Who knows. (In the research literature this is called perverse unintended consequences — it happens in business too. You try to make an improvement or protect against a particular hazard and oops, you made it worse.)

Customer Journey Maps (CJM)

I’ve been reading a lot about the Customer Journey Maps (CJM) technique used in marketing (see Folstad & Kvale (2018) for a fantastic and comprehensive review). It formalizes the very good suggestion that when you’re trying to figure out how to engage with prospects, you should put yourself in their shoes. Empathize with them. Figure out what they need, and when they need it. Then, identify how your company can not only meet them there — but connect with them in a compelling way.

CJM also goes beyond conceptual modeling. For example, Harbich et al (2017) uses Markov models to predict the most likely path and timing of a customer’s journey. Bernard & Andritsos (2018) mine actual customer journeys from sales force automation systems and use them in a Monte Carlo like way to uncover patterns. There’s even a patent on one method for mining journey data.

Benefits of Journey Maps

Annette Franz says that “done right, maps help companies in many ways, including to…

  • Understand experiences.
  • Design [new] experiences.
  • Implement and activate new experiences.
  • Communicate and share experiences.
  • Align the organization… get executive commitment for the customer experience (CX) strategy, get organizational adoption of the customer-centric focus, provide a line of sight to the customer for employees, and help employees understand how they impact the experience.”

But like Achilles, Customer Journey Mapping has a vulnerable spot that can wipe out all its potential benefits. (Fortunately, success lies in the way your organization wields the tool… so there’s a remedy.)

The Achilles Heel of CJM

Here’s the problem: creating a journey map does indeed ensure that you focus on the customer, but does not ensure that you’re focusing on that customer’s experience. Diagnosing Voice of the Customer (VoC) is hard [long explanation; shorter explanation], and there are tons of ways to do it! Through journey mapping, you may accidentally be focusing on your company’s experience of that customer throughout the stages of the journey. 

Diagnosing the Symptoms

How can you tell? Here’s a non-exhaustive list of ways to diagnose the symptoms, based on recent research and observing companies who do this since about 2009 (please add in the comments if you’ve observed any other ones):

  • Do you ever hear “How can we move the customer from [this stage] to [the next stage]?”
  • … or “How do we get more customers to join us [at this stage of the journey]?”
  • … or maybe “How can we get customers to [take this action] [at this stage of the journey]?”
  • Does your customer journey address differences in customer personas, or do you have a one-size-fits-all map? Rosenbaum et al (2016) says “We contend that most customer journey maps are critically flawed. They assume all customers of a particular organization experience the same organizational touchpoints and view these touchpoints as equally important.”
  • Do you systematically gather, analyze, and interpret data about what your current customers are experiencing, or do you just kind of guess or rely on your “experience”? (Hint: subconscious biases are always in play, and you’ll never know they’re there because they are subconscious).
  • Do you systematically gather, analyze, and interpret data about what your prospects would benefit from experiencing with/through you, or do you just kind of guess or rely on your “experience”?
  • Do you focus on ease of use over utility? (Just like perfect is the enemy of perfectly OK, easy can be the enemy of possible if you’re not careful. This often shows up in the journey mapping process.)

Like I mentioned earlier, this is definitely not a comprehensive list.

The Solution

What’s the solution? ASK. Ask your customer what they need. Find out about their pain points. Ask them what would make it easier for them to do their job. Finally, ask them if you’re getting it right! And even though I said “customer” — I do mean you should ask more than one of them, because needs and interests vary from person to person and industry to industry. Just interacting with one customer isn’t going to cut it.

Ask early, ask often! (As people learn and evolve, their needs change.)

Improving the Method

How can we improve the quality of customer journey mapping? Share your insights and lessons learned! CJM is a promising technique for helping organizations align around empathetic value propositions, but just like agile methods, it’s got to be applied strategically and deliberately… and then checked on a continuous basis to make sure the map is in tune with reality.

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