Forging a High Performance Supply Chain through eLearning
Behind every world-class supply chain is a world-class workforce. Companies with well-trained, knowledgeable employees operate more efficiently, seize market opportunities more readily, and weather economic downturns more effectively. However, the same innovative factors that define world-class supply chain management—rapid development and integration of new operating models; collaborative use of new technologies; dynamic, technology-supported business processes; and an obsessive focus on customers—also put huge demands on the supply chain workforce. As a result, a full understanding of the interrelationships among functions (e.g., product design and procurement) has become as important as the mastery of increasingly specialized functional knowledge. Moreover, human-level interrelationships occur with greater frequency across geographically disbursed companies. In effect, members of the design team in Chicago, the sales and marketing team in New York, the manufacturing operation in Malaysia, and component/material vendors around the world must understand not only each other's business issues but also each other's expertise.Fortunately (or unfortunately), all that collaboration means unprecedented quantities of information. To leverage advanced collaborative technologies or supply chain event-management applications, staff members must be able to analyze, assess, and respond to the data they receive. Even now, people are behind the frameworks, context, and insights that drive smart operational decisions.
Companies whose workforces have the right skills, knowledge, and experience still must deal with turnover: from scheduled career rotations and normal attrition, to cycles of layoffs and rehiring. All businesses must ensure that:
1. Their most valuable operational knowledge doesn't leave when employees walk out the door
2. They are able to bring new employees up to speed quickly
3. Training and education are delivered consistently, no matter where people are located geographically
In addition to employee turnover, there is also information turnover. In today's business climate, knowledge becomes obsolete rapidly, so companies are under continuous pressure to refresh their employees' skills and training.
Enhancing Company-Wide Knowledge with E-Learning
Not surprisingly, technology is a major contributor to the knowledge management challenge, furthering the tremendous increase in the quantity and portability of data. However, technology also is a major part of the solution. To significantly improve the performance of their workforces, more and more companies are relying on Web-based delivery of knowledge and training material—e-learning. However, organizations that believe e-learning is merely an online version of the traditional classroom are missing an opportunity to build and equip a world-class workforce.
E-Learning adds the ability to quickly build skills and expertise through multiple channels and personalized curricula. E-Learning also has the potential to help companies and individuals build and sustain new capabilities that foster higher levels of business performance. That means key supply chain skills can be made available to a wider audience, in a shorter time, with fewer disruptions, and at less cost. These skills make it possible for companies to:
• Identify and implement new sources of competitive advantage
• Transition people, skills, and knowledge more rapidly to capture new market opportunities
• Shorten product design to development times
• Develop more effective operations
• Anticipate change and respond accordingly
Although e-learning's mission is to help create a workforce that continuously develops and applies knowledge, skills, and capabilities, it's too narrow to position e-learning simply as anytime/anywhere access to courses and methods. E-Learning actually is about creating intra- and inter-enterprise communities of people who collectively (and continuously) learn, share, and apply knowledge. It is a variety of Web-enabled interactions linked together to build knowledge, skills, and organizational capabilities, including:
• Knowledge systems: Providing tools and repositories to store and access employee expertise and experience in support of continuous improvement and innovation.
• Industry and supply chain resources: Leveraging supply chain and industry experts, standards, benchmarks, and best practices to improve business performance.
• Collaboration and communication: Applying tools that allow knowledge workers to collaborate with peers and business leaders to share experience and knowledge.
• Virtual coaches: Enhancing the availability of job guidance—as part of a formal performance-improvement initiative or to support informal, regularly occurring improvement needs.
E-Learning: Power To (and For) the People
More often than not, management determines what employees should learn, and when and where they should learn it. However, the more e-learning is embedded within an organization, the more learning-program control needs to reside with employees. A primary reason is that a learning hierarchy simply cannot adapt to a world where 80 percent of a knowledge worker's skills become obsolete within five years.
Consider how profoundly the entire procurement process has changed in less than five years with Internet usage and the availability of new tools, such as electronic catalogs, e-markets and online auctions. The net effect has been that basic tasks, such as placing orders with suppliers, can be be largely automated through e-procurement software—not manually completed by a procurement staff. Also, the role of the procurement professional might now encompass strategic sourcing, supplier evaluation, and auctioneering and negotiation management. The new essence of procurement (and procurement training) is applying best-in-class sourcing and procurement techniques, refining decision-making and relationship skills, and developing technological processes. Procurement-focused knowledge that has not kept pace with these changes is obsolete.
Yet, traditional training is expensive to update, inconvenient, and costly to deliver. In contrast, a well-designed e-learning approach can deliver new content quickly and at lower cost. Furthermore, e-learning can foster knowledge acquisition and collaboration outside of a formal training environment, through tools that can capture and disseminate new sourcing agreements and metrics, or expert networks that facilitate innovation and development of best practices.
Obviously, procurement is just one area where faster, more comprehensive, and non-traditional approaches to knowledge acquisition have become essential. Other key areas include materials management, logistics, supply chain planning, line management, and sales and marketing. Whether addressing the needs of new, entry-level employees by building a basic knowledge and awareness of supply chain processes, terminology, concepts, and methodologies; or through supporting more seasoned employees by identifying improvement areas, applying best practices, and measuring results anytime, anywhere access to training, information, and a community of experts can powerfully influence both individual and organizational performance. When it comes to knowledge enhancement, management's most important role is providing their employees with a rich, multi-dimensional learning environment, and clear performance expectations.
A good way to develop this environment is with a simple e-learning framework focused on identifying the right people, requirements, success measures, and learning resources. By applying the Workforce Performance Cycle, individuals, teams, and organizations progress through a continuous, concurrent loop of learning, performance and innovation (Figure 1).
Figure 1—Workforce Performance Cycle
Learn
Successful e-learning approaches integrate strategy, process, organization, and technology. An example is performance simulation—placing individuals in an environment that emulates the workplace and challenges them to make decisions to support the strategic objectives of their business. Using multimedia user interfaces and best-of-breed tools, employees are exposed to important new learning approaches, such as goal-based learning, learning by doing, and failure-based learning. They also are privy to war stories from senior executives and can receive individualized feedback from artificial intelligence coaches.
Accenture has developed a computer-based simulation that pits teams against each other in a competition to tackle a company's operational demands. Using a recreated, real-world case study, participants work to resolve typical challenges of supply and demand matching, surge and uncertainty, and the bullwhip effect.
Research shows that people learn more readily with performance simulation. In a typical lecture environment, attendees may retain as little as five percent of the information imparted. People who read do only slightly better, retaining an average of 10 percent. Computer-based training, however, typically gleans retention rates as high as 20 percent, while learning by doing—simulation—produces retention rates of up to 75 percent. The result is that people perform more effectively, particularly when complex skills are involved (proficiencies that are difficult to acquire through traditional training). In addition, performance simulations can foster collaboration—perhaps the most essential component of the 21st Century business model.
Perform
E-Learning is not just about learning. For employees to apply what they've learned, they also must have access to performance support. That means accessing the tools, resources, and relevant knowledge that help day-to-day tasks get done quickly and correctly. In an e-learning environment, performance support is immediate and specific: users have click access to whatever they need to accomplish the task at hand.
Consider the case of a warehouse manager faced with the need to improve capacity, or a procurement professional who has been asked to source a product locally for the first time. In both cases, these individuals could benefit from access to high quality, relevant, point-of-need knowledge and expertise. There are numerous Web-available performance-support tools to assist supply chain practitioners in the field. They provide a range of capabilities, from simply organizing and prioritizing available content—such as benchmark data, business plans or supplier scorecards—to facilitating direct interaction with content experts. For example:
• Personalized, Web-based employee portals give workers point-of-need access to the information they require most. By integrating with knowledge management and Web-content-management systems, portals can be tailored to provide content and context to collaborations inside and outside the company.
• Advanced search engines not only locate specific pieces of information and people, but also rate the appropriateness of these resources in addressing a particular need.
• Virtual coaches and intelligent tutors provide individualized guidance as part of a formal performance-improvement effort or to support day-to-day activities.
• Online labs and collaborative workshops let employees hone their skills in a team environment led by instructors and other experts.
Innovate
Most companies with world-class supply chains have created a sort of biosphere, in which innovation is encouraged and nourished. In such an environment, formal mechanisms exist for creating, manipulating, transforming, sharing, and leveraging knowledge. Sophisticated approaches also have been developed for optimizing knowledge generated outside the organization: from customers, vendors, professional services firms, business partners, and suppliers.
A good illustration is enterprise portals, which provide shared organizational desktops that deliver personalized, relevant information, and foster collaboration by linking businesses, customers, suppliers, and employees to a common knowledge base and to each other. The result is a community of users with a wealth of ideas and a common, innovation-grounded goal.
Technology's innovation potential has not been lost on supply chain application vendors. For example, many of the newer e-sourcing applications not only facilitate access and connectivity, but also provide sourcing knowledge repositories. Such sourcing repositories provide excellent fuel for innovation, as well as a means of continuously measuring and forecasting results.
Moving Ahead with E-Learning
To date, most e-learning solutions have focused on IT content and customer service. However, with supply chain operations constituting as much as 70 percent of a company's costs, the potential value of e-learning-based performance improvements is huge. As shown in Figure 2, companies can clarify their strategies by positioning e-learning as a sequence of contexts:
• Operational efficiency is realized by making learning development/delivery architectures, design methods, content management systems, virtual classrooms, and tools available across the enterprise. Developing the appropriate infrastructure is fundamental to the success of any e-learning program.
• Learning efficiency is the product of high-quality content design, development, and delivery methods. These efficiencies can be gained through implementing process and delivery standards, digitizing content, and/or engaging a service provider to help manage the learning platform.
• Learning effectiveness is realized when the organization moves beyond
one-off learning situations to capability development. Transformational learning
approaches help the workforce to achieve higher levels of performance in less
time, thereby increasing the company's agility.
Figure 2 Accenture's learning value-realization model.
Not surprisingly, few companies have reached the learning-effectiveness pinnacle. One exception is Dell, which has been committed for years to employee-driven, Internet-based training. General Electric also has enacted e-learning programs, online mentoring, intranets, trading partner portals, and other innovative tools to create an e-culture that supports accelerated change and innovation. To quote former General Electric CEO, Jack Welch, "Our only strategic competitive advantage is the intellectual assets of our people."
The human-performance investments made by these and other companies have been publicized less than their business strategies, operational models, and processes. And compared to Six Sigma initiatives or lean manufacturing techniques, they certainly have not been so widely implemented. However, a low-profile does not obscure two important implications. First, it may help explain why companies like Dell and GE continue to set the standard for supply chain innovation and excellence. And second, it tells us that huge opportunities for knowledge- and human-performance-enabled competitive advantage have yet to be tapped by most companies today.
GM Turbocharges E-Learning |
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Using the company's interactive distance learning channel, 1,400 service technicians can figure out how to maintain the new Duramax engine in GM's medium trucks, which came out in August 2000. The sales force can role-play selling new vehicles to customers, thanks to technology that permits simulation of real-life experiences. At General Motors University (GMU) Online, there are nearly one million Web hits monthly and nearly 70,000 enrollments per year. Employees can create individual development plans, track their individual training histories, and use Web-based tools to align their training with development strategies in 16 different functional areas of the company, including communications, finance, engineering, health and safety, manufacturing, sales, service, and parts. GMU offers state-of-the-art education to the company's 88,000 managerial, professional, and technical employees around the world. This presents a dramatic contrast to the way training used to be done at one of the world's largest automakers. "In the old days," explains Donnee Ramelli, president of General Motors University, "we'd have to drag 1,400 people out of their dealerships to 20 traditional brick-and-mortar destinations. They'd be away from their jobs for several days." Today, thanks to GM's e-learning initiatives, much of the training can be done without anyone leaving the dealership. It's also cost-effective: for every dollar of e-learning that the company adds, it estimates that it saves two dollars for traditional classroom tuition, and another dollar for travel time or lost personnel time. Source: Fortune.com, "E-Learning: Harnessing the Power of Knowledge to Maximize Corporate Profitability," October 29, 2001. |
