Supply Chain for Management Consultants & Business Analysts

Course details

What is the aim of this course?

This course will help you drastically improve your knowledge and skills in optimizing supply chain of any company through a series of practical cases. It is designed for people who want to become management consultants, business analysts or have to run and optimize supply chai on daily bases. In the course you will learn 3 things:

1. How to understand supply chain activities
2. How to optimize supply chain in order to get more things done, cheaper at higher quality with less resources
3. Where to look for savings and improvements, how to calculate potential savings in Excel and implement them

The course is based on my 14 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting companies and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, improvement and turn-arounds in biggest companies from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B sector that I worked for. On many occasions I had to optimize the whole supply chain side of the businesses I was responsible for.  On the basis of what you will find in this course I have trained over 100 consultants, business analysts and managers who now are Supply Chain Directors, Operational  Directors, COO, Investment Directors, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members etc.

I teach through cases so most of the lectures are case studies showing some business problems solved in Excel. There will be also overview of main components of supply chain as well as some suggestion where you should look for improvements and savings. To every lecture you will find attached  (in additional resources) the Excels shown in the lecture so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modification, be applied by you in your work.

Why I decided to create this course?

Most consultants and business analysts are terrible at organizing operational issues. They treat the operations, especially the supply chain, as a black-box and try to avoid it at any cost. Technical things overwhelm them and they shy away from them.  This approach is not the right one as you find elements of supply chain in every business. To make matters worse supply chain efficiency and performance has huge impact on the ability of any business to compete and grow. Everywhere you have some supply chain that you can optimize by using techniques that I will show in this course.  Supply chain influence heavily other areas especially sales and marketing as well as production. Therefore, it is a good idea to have at least a general knowledge in supply chain. The funny things is that to be good at supply chain you do not even have to be technical at all. I have not finished any technical school and I am pretty good in finding significant improvements in supply chain.

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to build or to find improvements in any business you should master techniques related to optimizing supply chain. That is why I highly recommend this course not only to consultants or business analyst that have to advice their customer but also to owners, founders  of businesses as well as supply chain managers and directors.

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step by step guide loaded with tones of analyses, tricks, hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you find and analyze supply chain. There is little theory - mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will know:

1. How to understand supply chain
2. How to optimize it
3. Where to look for savings and improvements
4. How to calculate the impact of proposed changes in Excel
5. How to find the strategic fit when it comes to the supply chain

You can also ask me any question either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.

How the course is organized?

The course is divided currently in 10 sections and will be adding new section to address other important issues. Currently you will find the following sections:

• Introduction. We begin with little intro into the course as well as some general info on production
• General information on Supply Chain. In the second section I will discuss the strategic part of the supply chain, how to find the strategic fit, what aspect you have to pay attention to
• Retail - Examples of business analyses of Supply Chain. This section will start a series of sections devoted to specific type of business where are will show you detailed cases. In this section I will show you overview of the Retail Supply Chain, main challenges and series of cases that will show you how to get the full potential of the supply chain
• FMCG - Examples of business analyses of Supply Chain. In 4###sup/sup### section I will show you overview of the FMCG Supply Chain, main challenges and series of cases that will show you how to get the full potential of the supply Chain
• SMCG - Examples of business analyses of Supply Chain. In 5###sup/sup### section I will show you overview of the SMCG Supply Chain, main challenges and series of cases that will show you how to get the full potential of the Supply Chain
• Commodity - Examples of business analyses of Supply Chain. In this section I will show you overview of the Commodity Supply Chain, main challenges and series of cases that will show you how to get the full potential of the Supply Chain
• Distribution model - general information. Distribution (logistics and warehousing) is the powerhouse of supply chain moving physically the goods. In this section I will show you: goals of distribution model, basic laws of distribution, different  types of distribution,  Where you can find savings in, typical problems in Distribution
• Sales forecasting and customer service - general information. Sales forecasting gives the input data for the whole supply chain. Even small glitches in this part cause huge problems in the whole supply chain.  In this section I will show you: goals of sales forecasting, Sales forecasting and customer service value drivers, typical problems in sales forecasting and customer service
• Production planning - general information. Production planning is the brain of supply chain. If you get this wrong the other things won't matter.  In this section I will show you: goals of production planning , production planning value drivers, typical problems in production planning
• Purchasing - general information. Purchasing has big impact not only on cost but also the inventory levels. Wrong quality of products bought will lead to problems both in sales and in production.  In this section I will show you: goals of purchasing, purchasing value drivers, typical problems in purchasing

I will be adding new sections and lectures in the coming months

You will be able also to download many additional resources

1. Excels with analyses shown in the course
2. Presentation of slides show in the course
3. Links to additional presentations and movies
4. Links to books worth reading