Recommendations
A key output from a supply chain analysis project is a set of recommendations for how the supply chain (or other process that serves as the focus of the study) should be improved. The recommendations serve as a road map for how to transition from the Current State to an envisioned Future State, with measurable improvements in performance along several key dimensions. Recommendations should be based on the quantitative and qualitative data that were gathered and analyzed as part of the data collection and analysis phases of the project.
Strategic Issues in Developing Recommendations
When developing recommendations for an organization or supply chain, it would be easy to develop a laundry list with dozens of possible recommendations. Having too many recommendations, however, can be just as debilitating as having too few recommendations, since organizations faced with a long list of recommendations will have difficulty deciding where to begin. Oftentimes, a long list of recommendations can be grouped by common themes to develop the smaller number of meta-recommendations that provide a more compelling case for action.
For a project that involves a broad process (such as the supply chain, which involves flows of product, information and funding), it is important to deliver recommendations that cover a comparably wide range of improvement opportunities. It is unlikely that all the changes needed to improve the performance of a process are focused in one area, so providing recommendations that only fall in a limited area will provide the appearance that the project was too focused or that specific roles within the organization were singled out for criticism. Similarly, it is important that the recommendations include opportunities that run the gamut from immediate changes to long-term fixes. The implementation plan will be time-phased to indicate which actions should be pursued in the short-term, medium-term and long-term, because an organization can only assimilate so much transition at any time, so the recommendations need to be conducive to creating a multi-stage implementation plan.
Some eventual recommendations are likely to be apparent to the project team early in the project. It is important that the project team capture these potential recommendations, even if they arise earlier in the project timeline than during the Recommendations phase. Recognizing these opportunities will allow the project team to help build a stronger case for their adoption by ensuring that the data analysis is conducted in such a way that evidence related to a particular recommendation is illuminated.
A final issue to consider when putting together the list of recommendations is to be sure that the recommendations can be implemented. There are many reasons why some recommendations may not be realistically implemented. Recommendations may be too expensive, may run counter to the over-arching strategy of the organization, or may require changes to factors that are not under the control of the implementing organization. Just as it is important to put forward recommendations that can be implemented over different periods of time, it is also beneficial to have a suite of recommendations that can be implemented with varying degrees of certainty.