A Quick Guide to a Systems View of the Supply Chain

This Quick Guide, the second in the series, covers our perspective on a Systems View of the Supply Chain, just one subset of Supply Chain philosophy. It is our belief that using a systems view to examine and improve supply chains does actually reveal all of the key aspects that must be continually considered. This includes highlighting those “danger” aspects in supply chains that arguably can only be seen when taking a systems perspective. Whilst a systems view therefore essentially aims to stop making knee jerk and narrow view reactions, it can only do this when it systems views have been internalised and become the normal way “we do things around here”. In summary, with supply chains, it seems to us that managing a dependent process in isolation and managing it independently is plain folly. To prevent this, a systems approach is one approach which can be used to see the joined up supply chains collaborate with joined up thinking.