Chris Oleksy, Oleksy Enterprises, Next Life Medical, Emergent Respiratory09.08.16
In my June column, “Hand Me My Glasses...I Need To See It To Change It,” I referred to a college supply chain professor friend of mine who told me his questions on student exams over the past 30 years have not changed that much, but the answers certainly have. In sync with his comment, I told him that over my more than 30-year career, my supply chain challenges haven’t changed that much, but the solutions to them certainly have. And, when it comes to configuring solutions, there is no greater model for supply chain professionals than the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of SCOR. SCOR has made a tremendous impact for not only supply chain professionals, but for almost every industry on earth. It has saved countless dollars and improved almost every aspect of an organization’s structure for those smart enough to harness its true power. Further, it has been life-saving (or “career saving”) for many supply chain professionals. I thought you might enjoy a small glimpse of why and how it was created, since few know the full scope of its true history.
Yesterday
It’s fascinating that the older we get, the more we tend to say, “It seems like just yesterday...” Well, the development of SCOR seems like “just yesterday.” I was truly blessed in 1995 to be asked by PRTM (now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP) and AMR Research (now part of Gartner) to be one of the contributing authors of SCOR. It isn’t widely known that the approach PRTM and AMR took to developing SCOR was as historic and brilliant as the model itself. These organizations searched throughout multiple industries to find approximately 70 thought leaders to both help them confirm they were on the right track and also challenge and perfect their thinking around the evolving topic called supply chain. They realized that if they created a model that was built by consulting companies in a vacuum, its quality and acceptance would be sub- optimized. Little did they know the approach and model they created would later become the gold standard for supply chain execution worldwide for 20 years now.
It’s hard to fathom that in the early 1980s, supply chain degrees were not offered in college. One had to combine different degree concentrations to create a pseudo supply chain degree, which is what I did. In those times, many thought of supply chain as simply purchasing, manufacturing, or nothing more than just planning, logistics, or scheduling. It’s also fascinating to think the concept of sourcing—or outsourcing—was its own category and not really recognized as a “type” of purchasing, or a part of what I often call a supply ecosystem. Everyone from every industry and geography on earth (both academia and business alike) had their own definition of what supply chain was supposed to be. Some early pioneers actually had it right, but just didn’t know it yet. This reason is precisely why PRTM and AMR gathered the troops. It was time to create a lexicon and model that all could get on board with because supply chain execution would end up encompassing not only purchasing, sourcing, scheduling, planning, etc., but also affect all disciplines around it.
A supply chain council was formed of member companies including the company I worked for at the time—Dow Corning Corporation. The council’s thought leaders gathered in Boston, Mass., in various conference rooms and history began to be made, albeit alongside some heated (but rather significant) debates and discussions. Imagine assembling a group of outspoken thought leaders and pioneers, with consultants who were paid to have all the answers to begin with. And I must admit, PRTM and AMR did indeed have most of the answers.
From 1995 to 1996 in Boston, under the incredible leadership of AMR and PRTM, all those involved would argue, consider, change, and eventually create something that has since needed little revision to maintain its effectiveness. The individual “silos” of purchasing, logistics, etc., which many felt was the definition of supply chain by itself, ended up being comprised in a model that synchronized all of them into an ecosystem of sorts. In other words, if the focus was put on these disciplines individually without the recognition they all needed to coexist and maintain cross relationships with each other, the supply chain would be suboptimized. In 1995, that was more often the case than not in many organizations, which is why so many leading companies supported the inaugural supply chain council.
As simple as it sounds, the concept of evaluating a supply chain or benchmarking an organization against others before SCOR was very difficult, if not impossible. An “apples to apples” comparison was needed to do so correctly. The creation of SCOR was not only critical to have all disciplines and organizations reporting the same “apples,” but it also became a catalyst for internal and cross-organizational metrics and benchmarking. Reread that last line; it is historical. Metrics and benchmarking are mission critical for an organization. Without SCOR, metrics would be silo-based and could lead to suboptimal decisions being made.
SCOR, which synchronously links Plan-Source-Make-Deliver, and the concept of internal and cross-organizational benchmarking was introduced to the general public on Nov. 12, 1996.
Today
Today, SCOR is widely recognized, serves as the “go-to” tool kit for any supply chain professional, and is understood by C-suites as mission critical to an organization’s success. As mentioned in previous MPO columns, supply chain execution is synonymous with business execution because true supply chain execution is the “alignment, configuration, and execution of business elements” to achieve an organization’s business direction. Every business has something they are supplying; try naming a business that has nothing to supply to a consumer. If that’s the case, why are they in business? SCOR can be used for everything from churches to the military to Fortune 500 companies. Leading organizations have used SCOR as a competitive weapon over the past 20 years. It is no surprise that many of today’s top companies in their respective industries—Dow Chemical, Dow Corning, Johnson & Johnson, C.R. Bard Inc., QUALCOMM, Hasbro Inc., Bayer AG, IBM, UPS—were among the member companies of the supply chain council in 1996.
In 1995, the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) was the gold standard in teaching principles encompassing supply chain elements. I was certified by APICS in the early 1980s and anyone that sought a decent career in the profession did the same. Today, APICS has become the supply chain council and is the steward of all things related to the topic. They have done an incredible job stewarding what started in conference rooms at PRTM and AMR with those 70 thought leaders and turning it into a global gold standard.
In the process of stewarding SCOR, APICS has made necessary enhancements to it as well. While the current SCOR retains its original foundation (Plan-Source-Make-Deliver) from 20 years ago, two additional foundational elements have since been added—Return and Enable. While we knew we were building something special at the time, we didn’t know just how complete that model really was.
With the 20th anniversary of SCOR, one of my favorite holiday movies—“It’s a Wonderful Life”—comes to mind. In that movie, Jimmy Stewart ponders what life would have been like if he had never been born. I find myself pondering a similar hypothetical with SCOR today. Would SAP software be what it is today if a supply chain lexicon had not been created to guide discipline across disparate industries with regard to supply chain execution? UPS was a thought leader in 1995; would the company be what it is today without a lexicon like SCOR? What about Walmart? Amazon? Apple? APICS? Me? Maybe yes, maybe no; but one thing is for sure: All the aforementioned firms are utilizing SCOR whether they know it or not because it has become the norm in today’s lexicon of supply chain execution.
Tomorrow
Through my crystal ball, I see SCOR continuing as it has for the past 20 years, but in an accelerating fashion due to the increasing number of people using it. Individuals worldwide will continue to seek APICS as the “go-to” source for training with regard to SCOR. This will enable professionals to harness the power of SCOR for years to come. In 1996, there were a few of us working with SCOR. In the 2000s, there were thousands utilizing the concepts of SCOR. Today, and over the next 20 years, there will likely be hundreds of thousands or millions of people utilizing it. Certainly, billions will be impacted by it.
In addition, world-class organizations such as PwC or Gartner, that were built in part from the DNA of PRTM and AMR will continue to help organizations harness the power of SCOR thinking. The legions of past, present, and future supply chain council members will continue to implement and enhance SCOR.
Many others, like myself, will continue to tweak SCOR for industry-specific needs, such as healthcare. In previous columns, I have built upon SCOR with what I call the Value Chain, which is more encompassing than Supply Chain, and included patients to develop the even greater Care Chain. The universal foundation of SCOR remains the same, but the additional industry-specific needs are important. It’s similar to building a house in one part of the country compared to another. Foundational elements are the same but tweaks are made to address the needs of certain geographic regions, such as heat grids to melt snow on the rooftops in Minnesota or solar panels in Southern California.
Conclusion
It would be nice to think that what we did in 1995-1996 solved all the Earth’s problems, but it clearly didn’t. I’m sure some readers will say, “Really now?” My simple response to you is, “You had to be there.” In all seriousness, it’s hard to measure the impact of SCOR. At the very least, I assure you the brilliance of PRTM and AMR to gather approximately 70 of us together for this quest is something to be noted and celebrated.
The first article I wrote for Medical Product Outsourcing back in 2006 plagiarized the milk industry’s famous ad “Got Milk?” I titled my article “Got SCOR?” Today, I’ll leave you with the same question. Trust me when I tell you that SCOR, when utilized correctly, will become critical to you and your organization. If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and get SCOR.
Chris Oleksy is founder and CEO of Oleksy Enterprises and Next Life Medical. He can be reached at chris@oleksyenterprises.com or chris@nextlifemedical.com.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of SCOR. SCOR has made a tremendous impact for not only supply chain professionals, but for almost every industry on earth. It has saved countless dollars and improved almost every aspect of an organization’s structure for those smart enough to harness its true power. Further, it has been life-saving (or “career saving”) for many supply chain professionals. I thought you might enjoy a small glimpse of why and how it was created, since few know the full scope of its true history.
Yesterday
It’s fascinating that the older we get, the more we tend to say, “It seems like just yesterday...” Well, the development of SCOR seems like “just yesterday.” I was truly blessed in 1995 to be asked by PRTM (now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP) and AMR Research (now part of Gartner) to be one of the contributing authors of SCOR. It isn’t widely known that the approach PRTM and AMR took to developing SCOR was as historic and brilliant as the model itself. These organizations searched throughout multiple industries to find approximately 70 thought leaders to both help them confirm they were on the right track and also challenge and perfect their thinking around the evolving topic called supply chain. They realized that if they created a model that was built by consulting companies in a vacuum, its quality and acceptance would be sub- optimized. Little did they know the approach and model they created would later become the gold standard for supply chain execution worldwide for 20 years now.
It’s hard to fathom that in the early 1980s, supply chain degrees were not offered in college. One had to combine different degree concentrations to create a pseudo supply chain degree, which is what I did. In those times, many thought of supply chain as simply purchasing, manufacturing, or nothing more than just planning, logistics, or scheduling. It’s also fascinating to think the concept of sourcing—or outsourcing—was its own category and not really recognized as a “type” of purchasing, or a part of what I often call a supply ecosystem. Everyone from every industry and geography on earth (both academia and business alike) had their own definition of what supply chain was supposed to be. Some early pioneers actually had it right, but just didn’t know it yet. This reason is precisely why PRTM and AMR gathered the troops. It was time to create a lexicon and model that all could get on board with because supply chain execution would end up encompassing not only purchasing, sourcing, scheduling, planning, etc., but also affect all disciplines around it.
A supply chain council was formed of member companies including the company I worked for at the time—Dow Corning Corporation. The council’s thought leaders gathered in Boston, Mass., in various conference rooms and history began to be made, albeit alongside some heated (but rather significant) debates and discussions. Imagine assembling a group of outspoken thought leaders and pioneers, with consultants who were paid to have all the answers to begin with. And I must admit, PRTM and AMR did indeed have most of the answers.
From 1995 to 1996 in Boston, under the incredible leadership of AMR and PRTM, all those involved would argue, consider, change, and eventually create something that has since needed little revision to maintain its effectiveness. The individual “silos” of purchasing, logistics, etc., which many felt was the definition of supply chain by itself, ended up being comprised in a model that synchronized all of them into an ecosystem of sorts. In other words, if the focus was put on these disciplines individually without the recognition they all needed to coexist and maintain cross relationships with each other, the supply chain would be suboptimized. In 1995, that was more often the case than not in many organizations, which is why so many leading companies supported the inaugural supply chain council.
As simple as it sounds, the concept of evaluating a supply chain or benchmarking an organization against others before SCOR was very difficult, if not impossible. An “apples to apples” comparison was needed to do so correctly. The creation of SCOR was not only critical to have all disciplines and organizations reporting the same “apples,” but it also became a catalyst for internal and cross-organizational metrics and benchmarking. Reread that last line; it is historical. Metrics and benchmarking are mission critical for an organization. Without SCOR, metrics would be silo-based and could lead to suboptimal decisions being made.
SCOR, which synchronously links Plan-Source-Make-Deliver, and the concept of internal and cross-organizational benchmarking was introduced to the general public on Nov. 12, 1996.
Today
Today, SCOR is widely recognized, serves as the “go-to” tool kit for any supply chain professional, and is understood by C-suites as mission critical to an organization’s success. As mentioned in previous MPO columns, supply chain execution is synonymous with business execution because true supply chain execution is the “alignment, configuration, and execution of business elements” to achieve an organization’s business direction. Every business has something they are supplying; try naming a business that has nothing to supply to a consumer. If that’s the case, why are they in business? SCOR can be used for everything from churches to the military to Fortune 500 companies. Leading organizations have used SCOR as a competitive weapon over the past 20 years. It is no surprise that many of today’s top companies in their respective industries—Dow Chemical, Dow Corning, Johnson & Johnson, C.R. Bard Inc., QUALCOMM, Hasbro Inc., Bayer AG, IBM, UPS—were among the member companies of the supply chain council in 1996.
In 1995, the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) was the gold standard in teaching principles encompassing supply chain elements. I was certified by APICS in the early 1980s and anyone that sought a decent career in the profession did the same. Today, APICS has become the supply chain council and is the steward of all things related to the topic. They have done an incredible job stewarding what started in conference rooms at PRTM and AMR with those 70 thought leaders and turning it into a global gold standard.
In the process of stewarding SCOR, APICS has made necessary enhancements to it as well. While the current SCOR retains its original foundation (Plan-Source-Make-Deliver) from 20 years ago, two additional foundational elements have since been added—Return and Enable. While we knew we were building something special at the time, we didn’t know just how complete that model really was.
With the 20th anniversary of SCOR, one of my favorite holiday movies—“It’s a Wonderful Life”—comes to mind. In that movie, Jimmy Stewart ponders what life would have been like if he had never been born. I find myself pondering a similar hypothetical with SCOR today. Would SAP software be what it is today if a supply chain lexicon had not been created to guide discipline across disparate industries with regard to supply chain execution? UPS was a thought leader in 1995; would the company be what it is today without a lexicon like SCOR? What about Walmart? Amazon? Apple? APICS? Me? Maybe yes, maybe no; but one thing is for sure: All the aforementioned firms are utilizing SCOR whether they know it or not because it has become the norm in today’s lexicon of supply chain execution.
Tomorrow
Through my crystal ball, I see SCOR continuing as it has for the past 20 years, but in an accelerating fashion due to the increasing number of people using it. Individuals worldwide will continue to seek APICS as the “go-to” source for training with regard to SCOR. This will enable professionals to harness the power of SCOR for years to come. In 1996, there were a few of us working with SCOR. In the 2000s, there were thousands utilizing the concepts of SCOR. Today, and over the next 20 years, there will likely be hundreds of thousands or millions of people utilizing it. Certainly, billions will be impacted by it.
In addition, world-class organizations such as PwC or Gartner, that were built in part from the DNA of PRTM and AMR will continue to help organizations harness the power of SCOR thinking. The legions of past, present, and future supply chain council members will continue to implement and enhance SCOR.
Many others, like myself, will continue to tweak SCOR for industry-specific needs, such as healthcare. In previous columns, I have built upon SCOR with what I call the Value Chain, which is more encompassing than Supply Chain, and included patients to develop the even greater Care Chain. The universal foundation of SCOR remains the same, but the additional industry-specific needs are important. It’s similar to building a house in one part of the country compared to another. Foundational elements are the same but tweaks are made to address the needs of certain geographic regions, such as heat grids to melt snow on the rooftops in Minnesota or solar panels in Southern California.
Conclusion
It would be nice to think that what we did in 1995-1996 solved all the Earth’s problems, but it clearly didn’t. I’m sure some readers will say, “Really now?” My simple response to you is, “You had to be there.” In all seriousness, it’s hard to measure the impact of SCOR. At the very least, I assure you the brilliance of PRTM and AMR to gather approximately 70 of us together for this quest is something to be noted and celebrated.
The first article I wrote for Medical Product Outsourcing back in 2006 plagiarized the milk industry’s famous ad “Got Milk?” I titled my article “Got SCOR?” Today, I’ll leave you with the same question. Trust me when I tell you that SCOR, when utilized correctly, will become critical to you and your organization. If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and get SCOR.
Chris Oleksy is founder and CEO of Oleksy Enterprises and Next Life Medical. He can be reached at chris@oleksyenterprises.com or chris@nextlifemedical.com.