© Tetiana Zayets
Companies now appear to have a significantly expanded toolbox to assess and improve their supply chain alignment.
This week, the Chicago-based Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM) unveiled a revised digital version of its Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR), which describes the business activities associated with satisfying customer demand.
According to the association, SCOR is “the only comprehensive, universally accepted, open-access supply chain standard”, which has been used by more than 5,000 public and private organizations around the world.
The SCOR model, developed in 1996, has undergone sweeping changes, the ASCM said, and expanded to include categories such as resilience and sustainability, as well as new measures and benchmarks.
“It is essential for us to provide supply chain professionals with the most up-to-date skills to deepen their skills so they can thrive. This new update from SCOR delivers a more comprehensive industry standard that enables organizations to utilize and ensure their supply chains reach their full potential,” said Abe Eshkenazi, CEO of ASCM.
The redesign began four years ago, with ASCM working on a digital version of the 1,000-page SCOR manual in conjunction with Deloitte. The main work on the update has taken place over the past 12 months, involving a core team of 75 experts and feedback from some 500 academics, SCOR users and technology vendors.
The biggest change is a fundamental change from what was a linear model, placing a business between suppliers and customers on either side, with an asynchronous supply network that focuses on market drivers, visibility and the collaboration.
“It’s really about supply networks where things are often happening simultaneously. We had to move from linear thinking to a more asynchronous model,” said Peter Bolstorff, Senior Vice President of Development at ASCM.
The model’s six core processes (plan, activate, source, manufacture, deliver, and return) have been extended and redefined.
“Orchestrate” was added to reflect “the importance of strategy, business rules, technology and human resources which provide overall direction to build a more efficient supply chain and cover aspects such as sustainability, circularity and collaboration”.
“Make” has been replaced with “Transform” to broaden its applicability to services, and “Deliver” is now split into “Order” and “Fulfill” to reflect the complexity of e-commerce and omnichannel strategies.
And things like warehousing and transportation planning have been formalized, and performance metrics and practices have been reviewed and revised to give organizations new ways to measure and improve their supply chains.
Companies wishing to adopt the new SCOR model (officially referred to as SCOR-DS for “Digital Standard”) can access it directly online and free of charge.
“You can’t have a standard without adoption,” Bolstorff said.
ASCM offers a three-hour course that teaches the basics of SCOR, as well as SCOR training workshops. Additionally, the organization runs a transformation learning program that teaches participants how they can use SCOR systematically to improve their supply chain.
