The Farm Girl Takes on the Supply Chain

The Farm Girl Takes on the Supply Chain

In the last episode of Auto Supply Chain Prophets, host Jan Griffiths and guests Cathy Fisher and Terry Onica discussed the evolution of supply chain management in a global marketplace. They agree that the pandemic served as a wake-up call for business leaders who thought Industrial Age management systems were good enough for the 21st century.

This time around, Cathy and Terry turn the tables and pick Jan’s brain to find out what she’s observed in her three-plus decades in the automotive industry. 

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Themes discussed in this episode: 

  • The magic of setting foot on a shop floor for the first time
  • The value of working in a different industry for a while
  • Expectations versus reality, once you make it into the C-Suite 
  • Why "command and control" supply chain models don’t apply now
  • How leadership in an ecosystem model is about interdependent relationships, not about assigning blame when issues arise in the supply chain


Featured on This Episode: 

Name: Jan Griffiths 

Title: President and Founder, Gravitas Detroit

About: A veteran executive in the automotive industry, Jan previously served as chief procurement officer for a $3 billion, Tier 1 global automotive supplier. As the president of Gravitas Detroit, Jan provides online courses, speeches, podcasts and workshops designed to empower authentic leadership and accelerate high performance teams. Jan is the host of the Finding Gravitas podcast

Connect: LinkedIn

Name: Cathy Fisher

Title: Founder and President, Quistem

About: Cathy’s firm Quistem helps companies, particularly in the automotive industry, eliminate customer complaints and increase profits. She has worked in the automotive supply chain since the 1980s, when she started her career at General Motors. 

Connect: LinkedIn 


Name: Terry Onica 

Title: Director, Automotive at QAD

About: For two decades, Terry has been the automotive vertical director of QAD, a provider of manufacturing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and supply chain solutions. Her career began in supply chain in the late 1980s when she led a team to implement Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for Ford assembly and component plants.  

Connect: LinkedIn


At the heart of The Prophets’ vision are “The 24 Essential Supply Chain Processes.” What are they? Find out, and see the future yourself. Click here


Episode Highlights

Timestamped inflection points from the show


[1:19] From farm to table saw: Jan recalls being a “rebellious, passionate farmer’s daughter from Wales” who took a temp job in the purchasing department of automotive supplier BorgWarner. This was her first exposure to manufacturing and the shop floor. 


[2:44] Opportunity knocks: BorgWarner sent Jan on what was supposed to be a 10-day business trip to the U.S. She decided to stay. It’s been 35 years and counting. 


[3:09] A brief detour: Jan was “in love with the automotive industry” and worked her way through several Tier 1 suppliers. However, she spent a year directing LeanSigma at Maytag and recommends trying out a different industry for a while to gain perspective. 


[4:22] Reality check: When Jan finally made it into the C-Suite, it didn’t meet her expectations. Supply chain itself hadn’t always been part of the C-Suite. When it finally got a seat at the table, it was a victory. Yet Jan remembers her surprise upon realizing that its role seemed to be “all about cost,” rather than getting the right product to the right place at the right time — and driving profits.


[6:16] Modern times require modern methods: Stephen Covey said that “operating today with command and control as your leadership style is like playing tennis with a golf club.” Jan loves this quote because it applies directly to the auto industry. Tier 1 auto executives continue to operate their supply chains on this outdated model Instead of seeing the need for change. 


[8:06] The importance of launch: Energy, focus and resources need to be concentrated during a program launch. This is essential to the health of the supply chain, Jan says.


[8:30] Neglected links in the chain: Cathy has seen some effort in terms of advanced product planning program launch, sourcing and preparing suppliers, and negotiating. But other equally important priorities, like transportation, need more attention.


[9:10] It’s (still) all about freight: Terry is frustrated at what she sees as an industry standard for supply chain based on avoiding premium freight charges.


[10:01] Collaboration as weakness: Jan says suppliers are automatically blamed when a problem occurs in the supply chain. Those who choose to work with suppliers (rather than attack them) to fix issues are generally viewed as weak. 


[11:41] Secret rendezvous: In a former role, Jan found herself holding meetings with suppliers off-site because upper management thought the only way to deal with suppliers was aggression. That way, “[management] couldn’t see that I was actually having a reasonable discussion,” she recalls.


[13:36] Beyond the silo: Once you start to think of the supply chain as an ecosystem with interconnected nodes that depend on each other, you realize silos no longer apply and won’t take the industry into the future. 


[14:54] The big picture: CEOs would be wise to look at the supply chain holistically and bring in people from other industries. Diverse perspectives and expertise is crucial, especially when it comes to improving things like speed and agility. 


[16:06] A different animal: While electronic vehicle manufacturers may seem comparable to traditional automakers, they are actually very different. “It’s technology they’re putting in something called a car," Jan explains. "The traditional OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] are car manufacturers trying to add in technology. That’s a very, very different model.” 

  

[17:23] Bottom line: Over the course of her long career, Jan says that although it’s a “huge generalization,” she has observed that CEOs underestimate the supply chain’s power as a moneymaker.


Top quotes from Jan


[4:46] “The basic systems we have in place today haven’t changed. Cost is measured by standard cost and variance against that cost, and that’s what drives the behavior in the C-suite.”


[7:19] “If you're still operating with command and control in silos, with processes that haven't changed that much — really, how far can you advance?” 

     

[8:09] “The time to put the focus, the energy and the resources is during a program launch. To understand the full scope and complexity of the supply chain, and build in those processes early on. So often, we're just so quick to [say] we gotta get the thing launched. We don't spend the time to do it right.”


[10:01] “There's this … culture that says if something happens with a supplier-supplied part, it's the supplier’s fault immediately without question. And then I see supply chain is always scrambling to say … But no, actually, there's a little bit of both … we should actually work together and figure this out. When you provide a more collaborative approach, it’s often viewed as weakness, quite frankly.”

  

[10:43] “In many positions, I felt somewhat conflicted because the expected mold is very much command and control, and I am not. I am all about authentic leadership, collaboration, creativity and innovation. So I had to find a way to fit the mold, but not lose myself completely.”


[14:29] “Break through the paradigms. Stop thinking the way we always think, which is, Let's hire somebody with the same skill set in the same industry, who maybe worked in another Tier 1. Go completely different. Go outside of the industry. Know that supply chain has a heavy interaction and dependence on IT, on other functions in the organization. Look at it holistically. Bring that person in with a very different skill set and mindset, someone who understands speed and agility like we could never even think of in the automotive industry.”  


[18:09] “Supply chain clearly is where the money is.”  


You can find us here https://autosupplychainprophets.com/

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STAY IN TOUCH

Keep in touch with Auto Supply Chain Prophet's co-hosts Terry Onica and Jan Griffiths on LinkedIn.

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