In this podcast, guest Ken Chadwick joins host Caroline Chumakov to discuss two highlights from the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium keynote address, which was presented 6 June 2022 in Orlando, Florida. The key theme: using an offset strategy to manage disruption. An offset strategy involves a three-step process: sense, shift and steer. Supply chain leaders must sense the issue or opportunity, shift their thinking to get ahead, then steer resources to the biggest priorities. The podcast touches on two offset areas.Cognitive overload: Employees feel the need to do too many things. Use automation to reduce cognitive burden and focus employee energy on decisions that matter most. Use decision modeling to clarify what good decisions look like. Energy instability: The demand for energy is growing, but energy resources and power grids are becoming less dependable, leaving supply chains vulnerable. Evaluate energy vulnerabilities within your supply chain ecosystem, and seek to diversify your energy portfolio with renewable energy.Ken Chadwick is a research vice president covering global supply chain organization design, governance, talent development, change management and organization behavior. Using in-depth cross-industry research and insight into trends, he provides advice to supply chain leaders on how best to engage people and organizations to address the growing complexity of 21st century supply chains.

In this podcast, guest Christian Titze joins host Thomas O’Connor to discuss The 2022 Strategic Supply Chain Technology Themes, with a focus on digital supply chain twin, analytics everywhere and sustainability tools.Awareness of these themes is critical, as chief supply chain officers and other supply chain leaders continue to face gridlock brought about by disruptions. As leaders build understanding of these key themes, they can crystalize a clear digital supply chain vision, strategy and plan.Supply chain leaders undertaking this work need a clear, defined roadmap to be able to separate hype from reality. For example, they can use Gartner Hype Cycles to look at maturity and adoption rates, along with the speed of evolution and use cases. Leaders can then build their roadmap to their desired level of digitalization and transformation.

In this podcast, host Thomas O’Connor is joined by Tim Payne and Frank Buytendijk to discuss Gartner Maverick research that defies prevailing wisdom by showing that a reliance on demand-driven forecasting can be not just dangerous — but deadly — to your supply chain.A fixation with the demand-driven principle and a myopic focus on the accuracy of forecasts lead to rigid and fragile supply chain plans that are unexecutable amid the uncertainty and volatility of the modern business environment. Instead, supply chain leaders should concentrate on plans driven by that very uncertainty and volatility so they can achieve the resilience they need to succeed within today’s disruptive landscape.In the podcast, Payne suggests supply chain professionals should not be obsessed with forecast accuracy. Rather, they should examine the best-case, likely-case and worst-case scenarios and apply the principles of “probabilistic” forecasting to take the uncertainty into account.

In this podcast, guest Heather Wheatley joins host Caroline Chumakov to discuss Supply Chain Adaptation Responses to a Changing Climate. As climate change shifts the rules of the game, supply chains are having to adapt to increasingly numerous and unfamiliar disruptions.Gartner is exploring the concept of supply chain adaptation by examining how chief supply chain officers are thinking about climate change and how they can respond to the risks as their severity and probability escalate. This podcast delves into the importance of using risk assessment and scenario planning activities hand in hand to make decisions on future planning.Heather Wheatley is a senior director for the Gartner Supply Chain Enablement Team. Heather provides insights and advisory support to chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) and heads of strategy on risk management and sustainability challenges affecting end-to-end supply chains. Her work aims to show how proactive supply chain risk management can increase stakeholder value, enhance agility and help deliver organizational goals.

In this podcast, guest Sarah Watt joins host Thomas O’Connor to discuss sustainability trends as we celebrate Earth Day. Some of the biggest environmental impacts are within the value chain, including in the sourcing of raw materials. CSCOs, as custodians of environmental impact, also face external pressures. For example, investors are paying much closer attention to environmental, social and governance performance. Climate change risks are also an important topic to employees, who expect companies to take action on sustainability. This conversation touches on three key trends — changing greenhouse gas emissions, long-term resource preservation, and the use of technology to drive sustainability.

In this podcast, host Caroline Chumakov is joined by Eric O’Daffer to discuss the winners of Gartner’s eighth annual Power of the Profession Supply Chain Awards. The awards honor inspiring innovations at organizations around the globe in the areas of process, technology, customer and patient care, human breakthroughs, and social impact.From the 84 submissions in four categories, this year’s four winners are:Pfizer, for Customer or Patient Innovation of the Year, as well as Supply Chain Breakthrough of the YearSchneider Electric, for Process or Technology Innovation of the YearShell, for People Breakthrough of the YearMicrosoft, for Social Impact of the YearThe stories of these winners — each of which has built an internal process to foster innovation — should inspire CSCOs to learn more about the Power of the Profession Supply Chain Awards. It should also interest them in examining where innovation is coming from at their own organizations.

In this podcast, host Caroline Chumakov is joined by Dana Stiffler to discuss the current state of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in supply chain, and what chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) can do to further their DEI ambitions in the context of the war on talent. This episode will explore findings that reinforce the necessity of DEI objectives and goal-setting and how crucial those can be in attracting, retaining, and engaging the largest possible pools of talent. It will unpack what actions CSCOs can take to create inclusive supply chain leaders.The discussion will also cover what initiatives CSCOs should implement to make diversity, equity and inclusion easier to achieve on a leadership level and in talent processes.

In this podcast, host Thomas O’Connor is joined by guests Meghan O’Doherty and Thomas Pocock to discuss what chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) can do to avoid accepting the skill gap myth as fact. The guests discuss how the expectations that supply chain leaders now have of their staff members have grown exponentially during the years to include strategic skills that these workers may not have previously displayed. If your team isn’t consistently displaying the strategic skills you need, don’t subscribe to the skill gap myth, as it might be that there is something about your functional climate that doesn’t allow your team to apply those skills.Podcast based on Procurement’s Skill Gap Myth: Addressing Strategic Deficiencies Through Functional Climate

In this special podcast, host Thomas O’Connor is joined by guest, Koray Kose, to discuss the possible impacts that the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have on global supply chains.Organizations should expect to face significant supply chain issues — including key material shortages, material cost increases, production capacity impacts, demand volatility, capacity constraints and cybersecurity breaches. To mitigate these issues, organizations can immediately start creating first-tier visibility into existing supply networks. They can continue to commit and secure product supply volumes for the most fragile supply chains and increase resilience by deploying strategic redundancies.

In this podcast, host Thomas O’Connor is joined by guests Suzie Petrusic and Joanne Joliet to discuss what chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) can do to combat supply chain gridlock.The discussion centers on how a series of constraints, policies and high-impact disruptions have led to a case of worldwide bottlenecks. This amounts to much more than mere traffic jams, port congestion and container shortages. Disruptions caused by climate change, health issues, natural disasters, trade policies and tariffs have led to a situation in which events that cause the supply chain to grind to a halt in one area have stalled supply chain activities in a host of other areas.We explore actions CSCOs can take in this environment — for example, prioritizing sourcing, taking fresh looks at planning approaches and innovating manufacturing processes. CSCOs must drive collaboration and empower their teams to make the right decisions during this challenging time.