Managing home is no child's play!! Since human evolution, traditionally, women have been managing homes and in many cases even earning livelihood for the family, however, off-late even men have taken up the home-makers role. While there must be millions of pages written on how women manage / juggle between home and work, this article focuses only on home making experiences and explores how basic Supply Chain principles are inter-weaved into this art. Supply Chain is all about managing timely, cost-effective and uninterrupted "flow" of products / services based on consumer / customer needs....
1. Ontime in full (OTIF) customer order compliance: Right from the time we wake up, to the time we go back to sleep, our requirements are immense and expectations are high. The morning tea availability, clean jogging wear, availability of toiletries for daily morning chores, clean and starched office wear coupled with tasty / delicious breakfast and then obviously your office bag with all your fully “charged” electronic gadgets and in some cases a packed lunch. This customer specification is non-negotiable. You want it and you do get it, all based on the home makers supply chain skills of using concepts such as "Made to Order" for breakfast / food and “Made to Stock” or "Buffer Inventory" for toiletries, clothes etc.. Also remember while you may be the perceived king as the bread winner, the kids in the house are the real customer kings, their requirements and order patters vary in-line with their moods; however they are to open to emotional negotiations... Their varying moods and demands for altogether different variety of breakfast, school uniforms and the last minute school requirements for the day could rattle any human being, but all these customer demands are accepted and met in return for the customer feedback in such cases being a simple "smile" on the faces of kids and spouse. The entire morning is a rush for customer order compliance with time deadlines in terms of office timings and kid’s school timings. It complicates further if the home maker has external job commitments and then the concept of outsourcing emerges.
2. Outsourcing: When, juggling various customer demands, the low end or unskilled work is outsourced in the form of deployment of house maid to remove constraints. While there is no formal Service level Agreement (SLA) which is signed, the Homemaker has an hawk’s eye on the performance of the maid. While deployment of house maid does aid in elevating time constraints (fourth step of Theory of Constraints or ToC process), this requires the use of skills related to procurement of services and materials...
3. Procurement- Since OTIF customer order fulfilment is the norm, and it is fulfilled either through MTA (Made to Availability through Buffer design and maintenance) or MTO (Made to Order), it has to be aided by Procurement through effective negotiating skills and within desired budgets. Negotiating with Maid (Service Order Negotiations) or even locating a maid (vendor selection) could be a tough task, given the current situation of shortage of manpower for such jobs in urban areas...Not only a maid, but negotiating annual service orders with the laundry guy, car cleaner, newspaper vendor or the milk supplier etc is a huge task. While service procurement is tough, material procurement is fun as shopping comes naturally to women (if a guy is a home maker then this would probably be the most difficult task to manage). Procurement of daily food items, toiletries, home furnishings, kitchen fuel / gas, clothing for the family and apart from all this the lovely greeting cards or chocolates or gifts to surprise and delight her family (customer) require high degree of skills in Dynamic Buffer Management (DBM) (buffer could be material stocks or even time) coupled with negotiation skills to aid in timely fulfilment of family commitments. And the homemaker has to plan and plan really well.
4. Planning: If you really observe the homemaker going about the tasks for a few days, you would notice activity time scheduling, reviews for compliance tracking and also able to rapidly change plans in lieu of changing requirements of the family. The daily morning chores are scheduled and completed to timely perfection. In order to ensure timely deliveries, some activities are re-sequenced and outsourced as indicated earlier. The daily household requirements are many (high number of product stock keeping units (SKU’s) and service contracts), but the homemaker does not require SAP or any other ERP system to assist in tracking compliance for monitoring order fulfilment including ensuring seamless information flow. Have you ever wondered, the moment you come back home from office, the homemaker will directly / indirectly brief you on the day happenings and expect the same from you, however these expectations are often dashed.
5. Waste Recycling or Reverse Supply Chain: Have you ever wondered that as you keep on buying new clothes and household stuff, what actually happens to the old stuff??? This is where the homemaker contributes to the society in segregating and disposal of daily household waste (left over food, food packaging, vegetable waste etc.), recycling old household furniture, furnishings and clothes with a sweet bargain for some handy household new items in return. The home Remains Clutter Free and also the society remains clutter free with a systematic waste recycling process. Apart from a few organisations, majority of them, only pay a lip service to the above concepts of waste recycling, reuse and reduction.
6. Review through the famed Balanced Score Card (BSC) approach....
It would be wise to avoid explaining the Balanced Score Card (BSC) to the homemaker, as their deployment skills of BSC techniques without formally knowing them is commendable and many organisations can take a cue from them.
4. Planning: If you really observe the homemaker going about the tasks for a few days, you would notice activity time scheduling, reviews for compliance tracking and also able to rapidly change plans in lieu of changing requirements of the family. The daily morning chores are scheduled and completed to timely perfection. In order to ensure timely deliveries, some activities are re-sequenced and outsourced as indicated earlier. The daily household requirements are many (high number of product stock keeping units (SKU’s) and service contracts), but the homemaker does not require SAP or any other ERP system to assist in tracking compliance for monitoring order fulfilment including ensuring seamless information flow. Have you ever wondered, the moment you come back home from office, the homemaker will directly / indirectly brief you on the day happenings and expect the same from you, however these expectations are often dashed.
5. Waste Recycling or Reverse Supply Chain: Have you ever wondered that as you keep on buying new clothes and household stuff, what actually happens to the old stuff??? This is where the homemaker contributes to the society in segregating and disposal of daily household waste (left over food, food packaging, vegetable waste etc.), recycling old household furniture, furnishings and clothes with a sweet bargain for some handy household new items in return. The home Remains Clutter Free and also the society remains clutter free with a systematic waste recycling process. Apart from a few organisations, majority of them, only pay a lip service to the above concepts of waste recycling, reuse and reduction.
6. Review through the famed Balanced Score Card (BSC) approach....
It would be wise to avoid explaining the Balanced Score Card (BSC) to the homemaker, as their deployment skills of BSC techniques without formally knowing them is commendable and many organisations can take a cue from them.
The Financial perspective in terms of budget compliance achievement is a benchmark. The unanswered paradox of perceived spending to their heart’s content and their ability to always save some money at the month end from the tight budgets is baffling. They have mastered the art of saving money through tough negotiations and with subtle change in service and product (food / clothing etc.) mix, change in material vendors for cost reduction or sometimes even negotiate extended free credit periods for a healthy month end cash flow. Many elements of Working Capital Management is evident above.
The Customer perspective parameters such as "Compliance to Order fulfilment" and effective customer satisfaction in terms of a smile is legendary. Every time I sit down for dinner I am subtly prodded for a feedback on the taste and quality of food...how many times does an organisation actually do this???
On the Internal Processes front, the operational efficiency in improving availability and lead times (food, clothing, hygiene and cleanliness, kids schooling requirement, school logistics) are a benchmark by itself...Have you ever wondered how the kids school logistics are always in time with almost zero failures. Apart from the above, the outsourcing process effectiveness such as maid efficiency, timeliness of the laundry process or even ensuring that the car cleaner does his job daily before office timings
or simply ensuring compliance of the newspaper vendor or the neighbourhood friendly milk man (no stock outs) is all a part of daily monitoring or daily management as indicated through the Deming philosophy...
or simply ensuring compliance of the newspaper vendor or the neighbourhood friendly milk man (no stock outs) is all a part of daily monitoring or daily management as indicated through the Deming philosophy...
Learning perspective includes information sourcing from local neighbourhood including vendors for cheaper sourcing and obviously benchmarking with peers for improvement to create a situation famously known as "Neighbour's envy, Owner's pride!!" The element of self improvement is over-riding and this aspect is effectively conveyed in a Bollywood film "English Vinglish" where the home-maker protagonist decides to learn English language and eventually succeeds in doing it by overcoming all odds, without sacrificing any of her responsibilities....
To conclude, it would be prudent to analyse, as to what drives the home maker to effectively perform with benchmark results, probably, the answer is selfless care for the family. “Care” is one of those elements (Gallup Q12) which drive employee engagement. If every employee “cares” about the customer (internal and external), the organisation would definitely achieve sustainability with benchmark results.
Therefore suggest that before spending those huge amounts of money on Management Development Programmes (MDP's) or high end management school courses, one should practice "Gemba" (Japanese word for “Observation”) to understand basic principles of supply chain from the home maker and then proceed for higher learning... Am absolutely sure the knowledge takeaway would be multiple times...
Hail the home maker as the true Supply Chain practitioner!!!
Also Read:
1. Even God tried it.....Supply Chain Ocean of Daily Challenges!!!
http://supplychaindiary.blogspot.in/2011/04/even-god-tried-itsupply-chain-ocean-of.html
2. Supply Chain Flow Disruptions...Music Harmony!!!
2. Supply Chain Flow Disruptions...Music Harmony!!!
http://supplychaindiary.blogspot.in/2012/06/supply-chain-flow-disruptionsmusic.html
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