Advocate for responsible outsourcing

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the November 2017 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

November 2017

There are strands of sustainability and corporate responsibility through much of this month’s issue. James T. Prokopanko, the former CEO and president of The Mosaic Company, details how corporate responsibility became his compass for leader ship when he took over the reins of the company back in 2007. Similarly, Joseph Ludorf, the executive director of supply chain for Cipla Medpro, details how revamping the planning process enables the South African pharmaceutical company to prof- itably supply drugs to underserved populations on the continent as part of its corporate mission. We round out the issue with five tips for intelli- gent risk taking in…

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I joined the supply chain community in 1990, following my initial career in marketing. SCM has been my profession since.

My first position was in Arthur Andersen’s Logistics Strategy Practice, part of the consulting group that eventually evolved and spun out from the accounting firm into Accenture’s supply chain management (SCM) practice. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. The rise of globalization and consumerism led to the evolution of global supply chains that strived to source, transport, make and deliver goods from any country in the world and to sell in any other. Like many of my colleagues, I felt like we were solving world hunger and raising the economic conditions of citizens around the globe.

Using practices such as just-in-time, integrated operations and cross-functional business processes, we developed highly efficient and effective supply chain operations to meet the global demand for goods and services. In the United States we helped to satisfy the demand from affluent American consumers for products from faraway places. Our European colleagues did the same for their countries’ appetites for imported goods and services.

Initial doubts about outsourcing

Without question, outsourcing played an important part in the evolution to global supply chains. Thorough analysis and planning needs to be done on what to outsource, but given my history, I’ve been an advocate of outsourcing, when it makes business sense. I’ve argued with naysayer friends that companies were just outsourcing low-paying, low-skilled jobs, while at the same time growing the highly-skilled, high-paying jobs that Americans needed to maintain their opulent lifestyles.

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