IT'S TIME TO GO BEYOND END-TO-END PROCESS EFFICIENCY

The article highlights the dire need to look beyond End-to-end (E2E) process "designs" and illustrates why E2E unified "accountability" is the way forward.

- Tony Saldanha

End-to-end (E2E) process design is all the rage in supply chain management and beyond these days. E2E process design delivers efficiency across a work process. So, for instance E2E process design in Order to Cash (O2C), eliminates siloes that create inefficiencies between order management (in the Sales function) and accounts receivables (in the Finance function). Or take an E2E streamlined process that goes from molecule to shelf. That would cut across siloes in R&D (molecule stage), Manufacturing, Planning, and Logistics, and Sales (at the shelf stage). It would result in a super-efficient streamlined work process that ensures information from customers flows backwards not just for supply chain planning and execution, but also to R&D. Such streamlining would cut down the cost of supply chain execution, manufacturing, and out-of-stock losses.

What’s not to like about it? I would argue that while there’s nothing wrong with this vision, it is good, but not sufficient. It’s possible to go even further. In real life execution, we must go beyond E2E “designs” and into E2E unified “accountability".

Unified accountability provides even more business benefits than E2E process design. How? By ensuring that when things unexpectedly go wrong on a day-today basis during execution, there is a human who takes responsibility to address the issue, and to ensure that the overall objective is met. This concept is built into the design of how the aviation industry operates.

Let’s study the aviation industry for lessons on unified accountability.

LEARNING ABOUT E2E UNIFIED ACCOUNTABILITY FROM THE AVIATION INDUSTRY