HOW TO MEASURE SUPPLY CHAIN PERFORMANCE

E d w a r d H . F r a z e l l e , P h . D . RightChain™ supply chain performance indicator. I asked him about it. He shared that after some extensive research they had developed the metric of all metrics to define their supply chain performance. They had researched all of their SKUs and found the one that was the average weight, cube, and cost of all the other SKUs. It was a can of Starkist tuna. He said that they were just going to monitor the supply chain cost as a percent of sales for that one SKU and based on that reward or discipline their supply chain management team. My internals were going haywire trying to come up with a way to react that would not be offensive. I just said, “That’s amazing.” I then shared with him a make-believe story that popped into my head to help get the point across in a semi- humorous way. I knew he was a movie buff, so I asked him how many Rocky movies there have been. He said correctly that there had been six (that was correct at the time). I asked him to imagine Rocky VII, where Rocky and Apollo Creed are roused from their assisted living facilities to duke it out one more time. I asked him to imagine the scene at the end of the fourteenth round and it’s not looking too good for Rocky. He can hardly walk back to his corner stool to rest for the fifteenth round. When he plops down on the stool, his manager, Mick, exhorts to him to “man-up” for the final round. Rocky, exhausted and wavering, has a boyhood flashback of his favorite cartoon hero – Popeye the Sailor Man. In the flashback he remembers that in dire situations, Popeye could | 5