1Leading Your Supply Chain to Competitive Advantage

LEADING YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN TO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Creating the Path to a Supply Chain AdvantageSupply chains have taken on a new level of strategic importance in every organization. Leaders are managing tradeoffs to balance costs and service levels, add technologies for improved responsiveness and visibility, and build partnerships to differentiate services. Their efforts are compounded by emerging and converging technologies that continue to reshape the ecosystems in which they operate.

A critical success factor will be leaders’ ability to develop a supply chain strategy that parallels the corporate strategy and puts the supply chain on a transformation trajectory that lands the company out ahead of its competitors.

Skillful and forward-thinking leadership teams are hoping to seize significant value through the advantages offered by the new tools of the 4th industrial revolution. In Leading Your Supply Chain to Competitive Advantage, leaders will look through the lens of the “to be” to define how they’ll pursue new leadership skills, risk management plans, opportunities for innovation, and a strategy that parallels the company’s plan for growth.

Leveraging The Experts at Top-Ranked Penn State Smeal College of BusinessFaculty affiliated with Penn State’s Center for Supply Chain Research study influences and forces shaping today’s supply chains. They translate research into learning programs that empower leaders with critical knowledge and tools that are key to successful supply chain management.

Align with Business, Make The Right Tradeoffs, and Invest Wisely

We can actually use CorpU platform to validate the quality of communication and the level of understanding that takes place. It just works so much better than we had ever thought it would.

-Henrik Ancher-JensenSenior Vice President and President, Order Fulfillment and Supply Chain Agilent

Penn State’s supply chain curricula has been ranked #1 by global research and advisory firm Gartner since the inception of Gartner’s program to rate and rank supply chain education.

CorpU and Penn State have worked in partnership to shape Penn State’s award-winning programs into powerful online experiences that produce measurable ROI, meet the needs of busy leaders, and deliver cost and timing benefits.

Why World-Leading Supply Chains Make This Program a Top PriorityAll have valued that:• programs are customized to the unique needs of each

customer

• leaders identify millions of dollars in immediate improvement opportunities

• the experience taps into, and builds on, the collective experience and knowledge of each company’s own supply chain team,

• learning fits into the flow of leaders’ work so they don’t have to leave job locations

• leaders earn a certificate from the Penn State Smeal College of Business when they complete the full program

2Leading Your Supply Chain to Competitive Advantage

LEADING YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN TO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

A Unique Way to Improve Supply Chain Leadership Skills CorpU worked with experts from the Penn State Smeal College of Business to convert their expertise into fast, fun and valuable virtual courses that we call SPRINTS. Sprints represent a Minimum Effective Dose for time-challenged teams to build new capabilities.

SPRINTS ARE: • Time effective: initiatives fit around leaders’ busy

schedules, providing 2-3 hours of course material per week

• Rigorously relevant: content is tailored to focus on each company’s own supply chain business objectives

• Business focused: discussions are engineered to help leaders apply concepts

• Scalable: run successive cohorts of 20-50 or larger. Cohorts up to 500 are highly cost effective.

• Actionable Insights: interventions drive business impact illustrated through analytics

Program Features Leading Your Supply Chain to Competitive Advantage consists of six 1-week Sprints developed by Penn State Smeal College of Business and CORP/U. ????? INCOMPLETE TEXT HERE ????PLACEHOLDER TEXT SPACE......

SPRINT 1: Strategic Leadership Within Your Supply Chain OrganizationThis module makes the case for supply chain leaders to build a strong partnership with business leaders and to align the supply chain strategy to the organization’s corporate strategy. Supply chain leaders begin to understand how to configure and integrate their activities to align with the approach the company is pursuing to build competitive advantage, through cost management, differentiation, or focus. Leaders discover why they need a broader skill set than in the past as they consider success factors in top ranked supply chains as they learn how cross-functional collaboration, analytical tools, optimization software and other factors make best-in-class supply chains so efficient and effective.

Sample Daily Agenda

WATCH READ ASSESS CASE STUDY DISCUSS APPLY

3Leading Your Supply Chain to Competitive Advantage

SPRINT 2: Building Continuity and Resiliency in Your Supply ChainSupply chains must be resilient against many kinds of shocks that could be introduced through a vendor bankruptcy, weather event, cyber attacks and other unplanned events. Any disruption can result in harmful financial impacts. Leaders learn how supply chain teams can prepare by analyzing and managing risks, and putting in place continuity plans to minimize impacts from disruptions. In this Sprint, leaders identify strengths and weaknesses in continuity plans, develop risk reduction plans, practice decision making and learn to manage risk levers through a simulated disruption. Leaders discuss ways to address supply chain design, buffers, operating flexibility, security and other levers to prevent or manage disruptions.

SPRINT 3:Defining Ways to Improve Your Supply ChainThis module directs leaders to find improvement opportunities that can create competitive advantages. Leaders will learn to compare and prioritize opportunities by collecting data evaluating cost/benefit, ease of implementation and risk for each opportunity. They’ll factor into their analysis the seven supply chain principles, that when managed consistently well, yield a world-class supply chain. They’ll also look for opportunities in nine common areas -- suppliers, transportation, inventory, SKUs and others -- that are rich with potential for improvement. Leaders use assessments, data analysis principles and Pareto charts to find and plan improvements.

SPRINT 4: Supply Chain as a Competitive AdvantageHow does the company’s supply chain performance stack up against performance of its competitors in terms of customer service, cost, revenue and innovation? Leaders discuss competitive levers and changes that would put the supply chain on a path to outperforms competitors. They’ll explore the concept of the triple bottom line and how today’s sustainability goals often intersect with objectives to reduce waste and make operations more efficient and safer. Using the Innovation Matrix, leaders will collaborate to identify game-changing innovations in two categories: product/service or supply chain process, and two approaches: incremental or radical.

SPRINT 5: Supply Chain Alignment and OrchestrationThe goal of every supply chain team is to achieve complete supply chain orchestration where executives, employees and partners all have complete visibility across the supply chain and real-time information to make good decisions. In this Sprint, leaders use frameworks to evaluate alignment and collaboration, categorize functional areas as Traditional, Progressive or Leading, and evaluate ways to develop new synergies when managing client returns, moving from a demand-driven to market-driven network, using analytics to drive new efficiencies across the supply chain. Leaders work in small groups to determine how they will take action on one improvement opportunity.

SPRINT 6: Aligning Supply Chain Goals with Your Corporate StrategyThe final Sprint in Leading Your Supply Chain to Competitive Advantage asks leaders to consider process-led transformation work that could strengthen the alignment between the supply chain strategy and the company’s strategic priorities. Leaders examine the state of supply chain assets. Are the current assets preventing the company’s effort to lead its industry because they are redundant, inefficient, or in poor repair? Leaders discuss the supply chain’s current level flexibility and if it could be easily adapted to accommodate a merger or acquisition. The Sprint reviews how supply chain leaders use McKinsey’s 7S Framework and a trajectory diagram to plan improvements supply chain teams can make to put a company out of ahead of its competitors.

LEADING YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN TO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

4Leading Your Supply Chain to Competitive Advantage

Why CORP/U Sprints Achieve Measurable Business ImpactSupply Chain executives want confidence that investments in talent will yield measurable positive impact on business performance. Every aspect of the Penn State/CorpU supply chain program is designed to teach leaders practical, immediately actionable concepts they will use to improve supply chain performance. • Videotaped lectures, reading assignments,

engineered discussions give leaders a strong grasp of new supply chain principles and how to apply them.

• Leaders learn in groups - bringing together cross-functional perspectives - to apply collective wisdom toward breakthrough performance improvements.

• Simulations safely check leaders’ understanding of new concepts before they apply them on the job.

• Case studies demonstrate ideas in practice, and offer suggestions about how to apply the same principles in a new context.

• Idea tournaments manage a process for leaders to propose, review, rank and plan action on solutions to tough challenges.

What Supply Chain Teams Can ExpectPenn State/CorpU supply chain programs demonstrates a dramatic improvement over traditional virtual learning. These program attributes contribute to both high completion rates (92%) and stellar Net Promoter Scores (+58):

• 30 minutes of Sprint activities each day for four days

• A 60-minute virtual Live Event with expert faculty to summarize and evaluate work throughout a one-week Sprint

• An Expert Guide working side-by-side with expert faculty to monitor day-to-day engagement, questions, and comments

LEADING YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN TO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

5Leading Your Supply Chain to Competitive Advantage

About PSU Experts

STEVE TRACEYExecutive Director of the Center for Supply Chain Research™ and Penn State Executive Programs, and an instructor for the Supply

Chain and Information Systems Department within Smeal College of Business. Diverse

global background directing operations with full P&L responsibilities in more than 14

countries.

CHRIS NOREK, PH.D.Senior Partner, Chain Connectors, Inc. and Affiliated Faculty Member in Supply Chain

Management, Penn State University. Leads engagements in supply chain

strategy, include supply chain organizational structure, inventory strategy and

transportation strategy.

C. JOHN LANGLEY JR., PH.D.Clinical Professor of Supply Chain

Management in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State University with

Worldwide recognition in Logistics, including Top 5 Logistics Leaders Award. Former president of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals and a recipient of the Council’s Distinguished

Service Award Research.

CHRIS CRAIGHEAD, PH.D.Dove Professor, Haslam College of

Business at the University of Tennessee, and Affiliated Faculty in Supply Chain Management at Penn State University.

Primary research areas include strategic sourcing and supply chain disruptions, risk

and resilience.

LEADING YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN TO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE