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Supply Chain Progress

The 2008 Global Survey of Supply Chain Progress is notable for its much larger
respondent base which produced insights from a broader global perspective.
Nearly 300 responses were received from companies representing 22 industries
and spanning more than 32 countries. With general geographic dispersion by North
America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, results confirm that progress is being made by
most firms responding, but with interesting differences and nuances apparent
between the three major sectors and individual industries.
If a general ranking were made on overall performance by sector, the list would read:
Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific (which includes Australia and New Zealand), but
with variations in specific areas of supply chain competence. Industry characteristics
reflect movement towards factors of importance for each market, such as strong
internal integration for Chemical and Consumer Goods segments and leadership
positions in customer integration by third-party logistics providers and wholesale
distributors. In terms of overall supply chain performance, the apparent leaders are
Aerospace and Defense (A&D), Chemicals and Consumer Products.
The 2008 survey documents once again the differences between mature,
moderately mature and immature performance; as firms continue to proceed along
dimensions of supply chain competence. Results comparing the practices and
performance of the responding firms indicate that organizations tend to fit into
one of three distinct groups: leaders (15.6 percent of the sample), followers
(40.6 percent), and laggards (43.8 percent). Last year’s survey addressed eight
dimensions of supply chain competence. To reflect the global and expanded nature
of this year’s survey, we added two new areas of competence: global supply
chain optimization, and innovation management. Firms in the “leaders” group
outperformed all others on average across all ten of the supply chain management
competencies. Group...