SUPPLY CHAIN MOVEMENT, No.40, Q1 2021


our people more effective, and it’s what they themselves want so this is not something we’re imposing from the top down.”


Centralization


Like Grundfos, Philips has aligned its talent development programme with its own transformation that began three years ago. Until then, the health technol- ogy provider’s supply chain organization had been decentralized. “Now we have a new, centralized supply chain organi- zation which includes procurement and production. It takes care of product delivery for all Philips divisions, whether toothbrushes or MRI scanners,” says Wouter van Hunnik. He is head of HR for the new supply chain organization, which is called Integrated Supply Chain. In addition to centralizing its supply chain activities, Philips focused on fur- ther


optimization, and that included


in the area of talent development. Van Hunnik did some benchmarking in the high-tech sector in terms of job profiles and the associated competencies. “That gave us a basis from which to start build- ing the organization and work on the missing competencies. For each specific supply chain strategy, we assess whether


DIGITALIZATION 22


Digitalization is a key focus of any talent development programme, and in that context Grundfos launched its Factory of the Future programme two and a half years ago. It is sup- ported by a budget of close to two million euros, which may be used by cross-functional teams to set up pilots based on digital technologies. “This enables us to kill two birds with one stone. People learn to collaborate with col- leagues from other departments and discover the possibilities of digitalization at the same time. We evaluate the pilots after three to six months and decide whether to scale them up. We’ve conducted 54 pilots since the start of the programme and 14 of them have already been rolled out worldwide,” Sterlecchini says. One example of such a project is the last-mile tracking and tracing of shipments. A multidisci- plinary team including data scientists, logistics


experts and customer service specialists has set up a low-cost and effective solution that has been well received by customers. “Tracking and tracing is far from new, but it’s not a stand- ard offering in the pump industry. Not many customers were asking for it, but we decided to lead the way in our industry and roll out the solution widely – and it’s a success.” Sterlecchini emphasizes that the ideas for the pilots come from within the organization itself. “This is bottom-up innovation rather than top- down, so it’s the best guarantee that the innova- tion will actually be used later on. At the same time, it stimulates entrepreneurship within our company. And it’s not just about innovation, but also about developing competencies. You can’t do pilots like this with data scientists and soft- ware developers alone; you also need people from the business side.”


we have the right competencies in-house to execute it, and if not whether we need to bring them in from outside or develop them ourselves.” According to Van Hunnik, the role of supply chain within Philips has changed and still is changing: “Supply chain is growing in relevance. This has conse- quences for the profile of the supply chain professionals we are looking for. The focus was mainly on execution for a long time, but supply chain now has an important seat at the leadership table. Supply chain professionals are increas- ingly leaders – and influencers – them- selves who understand what customers need and take that as the starting point for their actions. That has implications for the recruitment and development of talent.”


Strategic competencies


At Philips, the supply chain talent devel- opment programme has three compo- nents. The first focuses on functional competencies and Philips


has estab-


lished its own academy together with Accenture to develop the skills needed for positions such as demand planner, supply planner and warehouse manager. The second component focuses on basic


competencies such as project manage- ment and change management. “The third component focuses on the more strategic competencies – those which enable supply chain professionals to be a partner for the business and to always put the customer first. This also includes competencies related to digitalization that help us to extend the innovative strength of our products and solutions into the supply chain. Take machine learning, robotics and augmented reality, for instance. We need competencies in those areas to prepare our organization for the future.” As an example, Van Hunnik mentions the position of demand planner: “With a group of demand planners, we’re exploring how to move away from Excel and towards artificial intelligence. That speeds up the work and improves the forecasting accuracy. But what compe- tencies are needed for that? Should we bring in the relevant skills from outside? And what will that mean for the current demand planners? How can we get them ready for the future?”


More interaction


Henkel’s Laundry Care division has had its own supply chain academy for the organization’s high potentials for the past 11 years. The academy traditionally lasted a week and was held as a face-to- face gathering, with presentations by the various departmental heads who pro- vided in-depth insights into their teams’ responsibilities and strategies. “The main goal was to share knowledge about supply chain management, but it was also an important networking oppor- tunity. The academy connected talents from around the world,” states Allison Bales, Senior Manager Strategy & Devel- opment at Henkel Laundry Care. The most recent edition of the supply chain academy was held in a different format. “We actually decided to switch from a physical event to a digital plat- form in 2018 but that change received some negative feedback due to the lim- ited interaction and networking oppor- tunities. In response to that we created more interaction in 2019 with a supply chain game, and that was a success. In 2020, the entire programme was rede-


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