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SCM TEAM BUILDING Once the team SCM leader is in place the next job is to form the team. Team here in SCM can be defined as a Small group of people with broadly Common goals & complimentary skills. As No single person can be an expert in all parts of the complicated processes of SCM business functionalities, it is essential to build a team on complimentary skill sets and traits. Whether one is heading up a SCM division of a major corporation, leading a governmental agency, coaching a sports team, starting a new company, or just took the position of President from your local Toastmasters, one need to know the secrets to building an ideal SCM team. Questions you will likely to face are: How do we get people contributing unselfishly? How do we create unity, a sense of community, and wanting to be part of the team? What can be done to make an immediate impact? Here are our five stages to build a great SCM team: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Build the core team. Build teams with complimentary skill set people around the core members Set the clear functional goals Provide facilitating environment to excel Reward performing people

Build the core team

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It is necessary to build a critical mass of motivated and committed core team members that would help to carryout the fuctionional responsibilities and lead the change management process. The selection of core team should be on the basis of functional core competencies, personality type and commitment to succeed. The most important aspect of any successful teams is its ability to attract key players who are committed to the success of the team. These key players need to demonstrate high levels of ability, leadership, loyalty and integrity. Identify these key players, and bring them at one platform thro close interactions, training and competency development programme designed to equip them with the skills for demanding SCM roles. The SCM setup could vary depending upon nature of business and type of industry. SCM Roles may also vary accordingly. However following are the five basic SCM roles for any supply chain management to create the core team.
1. Planning -This is the strategic portion of supply chain management.

You need a strategy for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for your product or service. A big piece of planning is developing a set of metrics to monitor the supply chain so that it is efficient, costs effective and delivers high quality and value to customers. Supply chain management is the art and science of managing uncertainty. If everything were known, there would be little need for supply chain management. A lot of things arent known. You know something is going to happen, but you arent sure what. You have to be prepared, Experience shows that there is little percentage of people capable of proper and seamless planning. Planning is an intellectual process and planners are normally not suitable for fire-fighting or daily routine operational jobs so to the extent possible these jobs profiles should be designed separately

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Planner personality type essentially is investigative and temperament type is Rational

2. Procurement- The job description here is to choose the suppliers that

will deliver the goods and services you need to create your products or services. Negotiation skills, integrity, entrepreneur capabilities, communication skills, intelligence, ability to take decision etc are the other qualities are the mainly requirements for the core position The person should fall into enterprising personality type and may be temperamentally a guardian
3. Warehousing- Traditionally major function of warehousing is schedule

planning, receipt, /dispatch/issue of goods and proper preservation/storage of material. However with the changing time there are several technological attributes which make warehousing a specialized job. ERP integration with up and downstream functions and usage of computerized automated shuttle storage system to save on time and space. The personality type may be conventional and temperament type is Rational
4. Logistics - Coordinate the movement of supplies received and

dispatches made. Also coordinate receipt of orders from customers, develop a network of warehouses, pick carriers to get products to customers and set up an invoicing system to receive payments. Return of rejection belonging to suppliers or to be received from customers is the part of the any supply chain. Create a network for receiving defective and excess products back from customers and supporting customers who have problems with delivered products. The personality type may be realistic and temperament type is Rational.

5. Systems/ERP - the integrated supply chain as it serves as the integrated

planning and control system. Also Supply chain technology offers a unique opportunity to look at your business in a new way and change it for the better. Designing and operating such system require creativity and in depth knowledge of SCM processes. Supply chain technology

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offers a unique opportunity to look at your business in a new way and change it for the better The personality type may be investigative and temperament type is Rational. Scope of any supply chain starts from suppliers and ends at customers so whatever comes in between is part of supply chain be manufacturing or sales. Core competencies of these function would be different and can be added in case of integrated approach. Build a team of complimentary skill set people around the core members The core teams should be surrounded by supporting professionals having complementary skill sets and temperaments. It is in built in human nature that they take pride of themselves and appreciate people who are similar to themselves. This creates similarity bias and they feel more secure in an environment of similarity. They rate and rank high to people from their own gender, nationality, region, race, tribe, culture or religion. In professional life such similarities bias could further get extended to educational institutes, functions (i.e. technical/accounting), working backgrounds (Army, civil services) and traits etc. So managers unconsciously and unintentionally select and reward people similar to them in any working environment which actually is detrimental to the organizations as it limits the intellectual and operational capability of the team. They all try to think and function in same style as their leader and there is a little the team can think beyond. There is tendency to create an army of clones. People from different cultures , backgrounds and professional experience brings something new in the team which increase the shared learning of the teams .Complementary skills increase the efficiency of the teams to close to perfection level. So while selecting supporting staff more weightage should be given to variance rather than similarity. For example an aggressive extrovert and enterprising person should be better supported by a thorough and analytical
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assistant so that at least one of them should go into the details of issues and other could sail it through. Sometimes we cannot find from within. Either we are growing quickly or we must bring in new people, or the people previously in our organization left for other opportunities. Either way, we must grow from an atmosphere of success. Set the clear functional goals The next step is to assign the job roles. Job roles are to be defined and simplified around the core activities on the basis of synergy and similarity of efforts. There could be several sets of arrangements possible and it is required to select one with optimum resultant output. For example similar items or same suppliers are to be dealt by one set of buyers. Inbound logistics and outbound logistics could be clubbed together to bring in to & fro freight economics or can be separately handled looking to the variation in volumes and destinations. Once job roles are defined set the functional goals in quantitative measurable terms. The goals should be realistic and achievable with efforts. Procurement team can have a goal of Year-on-year cost reduction in the region of say 5 %, measured by price variance and adjusted for inflation factor. Similarly Delivery reliability target can be to improve upto 95% on time. Or Product lead times to be improved by 10 percent every year.

Provide facilitating environment to excel

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Leader is to create an atmosphere of fun, success, and unique mission (being part of something special). If you want to win, you have to have fun. People don't have fun when they are losing. They also don't have fun if they are blamed for failures, backstabbed in communication, or treated poorly. So, eliminate poor methods of management and replace them with empowering methods of communication. People will rise to the occasion when you empower them. How do we empower others? Let them know the expectation, create a sense of fun, urgency, and doing something special, and then coach them by letting them know they are believed in, supported, and will be looked after. Love your employees, it goes against popular human resource opinion, but if we are to create more abundance, we must create more love. And love is an action word. What actions do we show? Care? Concern? Do we listen and know what makes our team want to perform? What are individual needs? This is also exactly the same what we are taught in Indian or broadly oriental joint family system where facilitating environment is provided to get participation/contribution from younger/elderly/sick/less performing members of family rather than throwing them out as they might be drag on family resources. As a leader, one needs to show his own employees that they are part of something special. If you are a new manager or have an organization where you want to create a great team, you have these tools to add to your bag of success. Best practices are driven by three elements in a company - extremely strong performance culture, setting up very ambitious objectives and inspiring leadership. This leadership has to be all at levels and not only at CEO level. One should look at capabilities and bundling of these capabilities for enduring advantage Did people fail before you? Is your organization in chaos? This is a good time for you to implement your program, as people are looking for leadership in times of chaos. In times of failure, we must learn. In times of chaos, we must lead. Leaders raise the bar of expectations. Winning is the
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objective. Building upon success is usually the strategy. So, find a small goal, set it, and achieve it at all costs. But raise the bar. The first year, set a goal for 30% improvement. The second year, raise it again. The third year, set a goal for 100% success, with 200% effort, and watch your success grow.

Then come the consistency in approach. In consistency, there are three components to success: Consistent habits Consistent location Consistent people Consistent habits are important for individual performance, and also important for team performance. If you hold a meeting for your organization on Tuesday at 10 AM, keep it at that time and don't change it unless absolutely necessary. Consistent location is also important. Take an example of sales manager who frequently pulled salespeople out of one territory, then assigned them to a different geography. The team remains struggling under his poor leadership. The new manager assigned both geography and vertical markets to his team, and kept those territories 80% in place for three years. His team succeeded dramatically higher than the previous manager's team. Consistency in people is the biggest problem organizations face. The pressure to succeed is enormous, especially when you have been failing (missing quotas, missing playoffs, blowing budgets, etc.) New leaders often have such enormous pressure to win it all in their first season as coach. There are two reasons why relationships fail: Inability to communicate and Unrealistic expectations.

It is no different in leadership. Reasonable expectations, clearly communicated, should result in higher success over time. However, organizations with consistently poor performance usually have an unusually high record of firing or replacing their top leaders. Organizations that

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succeed keep their top leaders, keep their top players, and through that loyalty attract others to their winning ways. Reward performing people Promote and reward your performing and successful people. It will create several leaders and would have a cascading effect of harvesting further success. For example in the case of successful sales setup. If you wish to achieve sales success, give each salesperson an equal territory. See which one performs the best during a test period of time, and you likely have your nucleus of performers. Or, if the nucleus is established, the way to figure out who will rise above the pack is to encourage each person equally, and place them with mentors. Make sure the mentors are informed as to how to coach their mentored team mate. The mentors will then let you know if their team mate will make it, and also help them succeed by teaching them their own secrets to success. If people do not succeed with mentors, they might require special handling, but promoting people who repeatedly fail is not likely to result in success. Learn from failure, promote from wins. By rewarding the performance you create several entrepreneurs within an organization which inspires others also to perform. Rewarding the winner should be unbiased as was mentioned earlier in similarity error and solely should be dependent upon an employees performance. Another factor which creates bias is educational qualification which is more important at entry level as a trainee. Performance at later stages is more dependent on ones capabilities, attitude and quality of experience gained in given environment. Performance of a manager with 20 years of experience will have more bearing of these factors rather than the quality of education he got from a premier institute 20 years back. Updation of knowledge and skill sets are more important in todays age of fast changing technology and obsolescence of even knowledge gained 20 years back. How many of us who are in their forties and fifties remember importance of computers and systems taught to us as at that time. Today these technologies have changed the face of the business be it manufacturing, service industry or banking.
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So performance of an employee is clear indication of how he is keeping pace with the new technologies and skills. Promotions and monetary rewards are very important as these increase the stature and status of an employee. Promoting an employee is sometimes organizational requirement too so that a performing employee should start performing at higher platform where his output will add further value to the organization. Another powerful reward is recognition apart from the money. If you're not convinced of this, start ignoring one of your highly paid stars, and watch what happens. Most managers are aware that employees respond well to recognition. Great managers refine and extend this insight. They realize that each employee plays to a slightly different audience. To excel as a leader, you must be able to match the employee to the audience he values most. One employee's audience might be his peers; the best way to praise him would be to stand him up in front of his coworkers and publicly celebrate his achievement. Another's favorite audience might be you; the most powerful recognition would be a one-on-one conversation where you tell him quietly but vividly why he is such a valuable member of the team. Still another employee might define himself by his expertise; his most prized form of recognition would be some type of professional or technical award. Yet another might value feedback only from customers, in which case a picture of the employee with her best customer or a letter to her from the customer would be the best form of recognition. Given how much personal attention it requires, tailoring praise to fit the person is mostly a manager's responsibility. But organizations can take a cue from this, too. There's no reason why a large company can't take this individualized approach to recognition and apply it to every employee. A person's strengths aren't always on display. Sometimes they require precise triggering to turn them on. Squeeze the right trigger, and a person will push himself harder and persevere in the face of resistance. Squeeze the wrong one, and the person may well shut down. This can be tricky because triggers come in myriad and mysterious forms. One employee's trigger might be tied to the time of day (he is a night owl and his strengths only kick in after 3 PM). Another employee's trigger might be tied to time with you, the boss (even though he's worked with you for more than five years, he still needs you to check in with him every day, or he feels he's being ignored). Another
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worker's trigger might be just the opposite -- independence (she's only worked for you for six months, but if you check in with her even once a week, she feels micromanaged). Apart from the above steps to create a world class team for supply chain we also require to identify their needs of training to have an competitive edge in this era of fast changing technology.

REFERENCES AND RESOURCES USED

The Dynamics of Team Formation by Robert W. Wallace The Human Resource Practices Development (HRPD) by Joan F. Rice, V.P. for Human Resources How to Build A Great Team By Scott Andrews Team Technology - articles, exercises, and links on team building using the Myers-Briggs test .The Journal of Supply Chain Management

:A Global Review of Purchasing and Supply Cahners Communications

One on One ..An Interview with Kathleen R. Fuller The Payoff Potential in Supply Chain Management (4/15/1999) Ascet Volume 1 By Frank Quinn,

Career development Theory "Many things difficult to design prove easy to perform."by Samuel Johnson

This topic was a part of Fellowship thesis at CRIMM/IISWBM CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN MATERIALS MANAGEMENT (CRIMM). Which has been set up jointly between the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Calcutta (ISWBM).the first management institute of India, (setup in 1953) and IIMM, Calcutta. CRIMM is one of the research centre and only one in Asia under International Federation of Purchasing and Materials Management (IFPMM) Vienna. The other three being.

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"European Centre for Research in Purchasing & Supply", Vienna, Austria. "Centre for Advanced Purchasing Studies", Arizona, USA. "Centre for Advanced Purchasing Studies for Africa", Johannesburg, South Africa.

There is a co-operation agreement between all the four Research Centers of the world. jaswantchopra@yahoo.co.in

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