FMCG AI or !!SQUASHED CAT!! ... Re: [Ailist] experience

[Lionel Boxer]

In the early 1990s I worked with Proctor and Gamble Australia's logistics operations.

This was before AI and before I became aware of social constructionism.  I was very much a technocrat in those days.

We applied KPMG's Logistics Management consulting methodology, which in part bore a striking resemblance to quality circles / total quality management / process improvement.  When I implemented the program for P&G some of them in the room said, "we did this quality stuff before" and I asked, "did you apply it?", to which they asked, "were we meant to?"  After a few hours they said, "when we did quality before it was nothing like this approach to resolving issues - it was all about calculating statistical distributions".  To which I replied, "if you need the statistical tools you can pull them out of the tool box - at this stage you really need to focus on achiving some basic sorting out of how you think about the things that are challenging you." (In those days I did not speak in such AI terms - I spoke more about problem solving - so, the quotes above are not verbatim!)

Interestingly, the subcontracted warehousing that handled all the orders for Australian and New Zealand took very well to the program and I faciliatated a little more logistics focused continual improvement team work with them than P&G was able to cope with.  The owner of the business said to me,"I do not know what you did to those guys, but they are different people".  All I did was approach things that they wanted to solve in a positive and empowering way.  They were a rough bunch, who preferred to refer to the fishbone diagram as a squashed cat (when I asked them what it looked like one of them said SQUASHED CAT!).  So, that is what we called the Ishikawa / fishbone diagram for the balance of the week.  The call for commencing a new project became "!!SQUASHED CAT!!" - can you picture this room full of scruffy and rough tattooed men engaging in real appreciative discussions, resolving issues and making the world a better place?  It was not that perfect a utopia, but we did achieve some remarkable progress that even surprised me.

The P&G supply chain we worked with involved fast moving consumer goods arriving in Sydney from all over the world, being received, warehoused, picked for orders, packed, loaded on trucks/containers, and despatched by road, rail and ship (to New Zealand, where it was then distributed domestically and to the Island nations around NZ).

At the time, I recall that P&G was reported in the Australian Financial Review (public news paper www.afr.com) as having about $7,000,000 excess logistics costs in the SE Asia region.  As I understand, the outsourced logistics operator saved P&G $1,000,000 in the first year and then retired with the other $1,000,000 he earned as profit in the first year.  However, that is hearsay and not based on anything other than that the next time I spoke to him he returned my call from his yacht in the Witsundays (islands north east of Australia, on which he apparently lived).  So, there is apparently big money to be made from sorting out supply chains.

P&G is a great business - it has the same challenges all big businesses have: embedded people who have forgotten how to think and they get them selves entrenched into places that confound organisational effectiveness and efficiency.  Leadership challenge is to find these people and help them realise that they do not have the right to obstruct resolution of the mess they are part of (recall: http://intergon.net/tsw/sustainableceos.pdf)

!!SQUASHED CAT!!

Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA BTech(IndEng) - 0411267256
Associate of RMIT University - lionel.boxer at rmit.edu.au
Graduate School of Business
my "Assessment of Quality Systems with Positioning Theory" 
now in a googe book - see link at http://intergon.net
>>> <relationshipresources at fuse.net> 05/15/09 3:46 AM >>>

Hello all
Has anyone ever done any work with supply chain clients?  Any suggestions about this particular kind of business and AI
Joan

--
Joan Colleran Hoxsey D.Min., MSed
Principal, Relationship Resources LLC
Co-owner AIC
513 681-2513

"Be the change you wish to see in the world"...Gandhi
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