The art of warfare

Applying the Wisdom of Sun Tzu to Supply Chain Management

By Mary Walker -- Industrial Distribution, 8/1/2005

When it comes to supply chain management, there is no doubt that companies are in the thick of a battle to beat their competition and gain dominance in market share. But the fog of war is heavy, and the map pointing toward success is often poorly drawn. Could the idea penned by the real-life warrior named Sun Tzu be the key companies need to focus their efforts?

The writings of Tzu, collectively called The Art of War, are more than 2,500 years old, yet they are as applicable today as they were when they were first written. Throughout Tzu's writings are themes of leadership, communication, planning, preparation, and discipline.

It is well documented that General George Patton read Tzu as part of his personal professional development, and he was noted as saying, "No effective decision was ever made from the seat of a swivel chair."

What Patton, as well as Tzu, is telling us is that leaders have to get out of the office, leave the computer screen, and see what is really happening on the shop or warehouse floor.

The supreme importance in supply chain management is to have a strategy that will meet the needs of the customer. If you are not focusing on what is important to the customer, you are focusing on the wrong things, and it is time to re-evaluate your supply chain strategy.

"Therefore, when I have won a victory, I do not repeat my tactics but respond to circumstances in an infinite variety of ways."

What Tzu is telling us, is to change our tactics after we've looked at what we did right or wrong in the heat of battle. In the Army, they use a process known as the "After-Action Review."

The process is used after every training event and every operation to determine what went right according to the plan, or what went wrong and why. This process is not designed to fix blame for something that went wrong, but instead it is meant to find out why something went wrong and how to preclude it from happening again.

Throughout The Art of War, Tzu lists the qualities of leaders and gives examples as to how leaders should act. He implies and reminds us that supply chain leaders too, are truly the key to the success or ruin of a corporation.

When the successful supply chain leader discovers a problem, or a plan does not proceed as expected, Tzu says that an after-action review should be conducted to determine why the plan did not work.

Finally, what Tzu shows us through his ancient writings is that, as far as we have come in the past 2,500 years with technologies and customer demands for faster service, the basics of leadership and root cause analysis of problems will still lead us to the top.