Conclusion: Business As Usual Has Been Canceled, Now What?
Welcome to Supply chain management in the twenty-first century! Do you remember the sidebar in Chapter about the Smart Supply Network? If you don't believe now that it can be done and that the leaders aren't transforming their operations to leverage their people, processes, and technology for real-time, always on, fully visible, smart supply networks, then you can rip out the rearview mirror...no one's behind you. By the way, the leaders don't have rearview mirrors either...because what's behind them doesn't matter. They are moving forward. Their only concern is how to move anything that gets in their way.
When I first thought about actually writing a book, my real first inclination for a title was “Business as Usual Has Been Canceled, Now What?” I had been using it as the title to several presentations that I was doing that year. When I was with Burroughs, I found a great cartoon depiction of a “plumber's nightmare” that was used to show the problems with software development. It depicted a configuration of pipes, valves, buckets, sinks, and bathtubs with leaks in the flow everywhere and people trying to bail out the muck leaking through the pipes. I labeled the various muck repositories as supplier, manufacturer, distributer, and retailer and used it to illustrate the traditional supply chain as a pipeline and the associated plumbing. I have used it in presentations ever since. I even had T-shirts made up to give away ...
