Johnson & Johnson aims to exceed customer expectations. With their focus on artificial and predictive intelligence, their supply chain organization is developing a state of the art engine that gives an accurate date to customers for their medical devices. Gemba’s Supply Chain Innovation Masterclass helped Neil Ackerman, Senior Director of Advanced Supply Chain Planning at Johnson and Johnson simplify supply chain operations leading to increase in efficiency. This has led to high customer satisfaction and ensuring Johnson & Johnson remains the partner of choice.

My Challenges:

In the old world, supply chain was all about batches and demand focused planning. Actions were guided and it was all about the system of record with many silos. In the new world of supply chain, supply chain is no longer a cost center. It has the potential to be a revenue generating machine with continuous processes, auto-event driven monitoring focused on innovation and differentiation. The real-time focus causes excitement for everyone in the business, but it also poses many challenges in the transition stage. When I attended Gemba’s Supply Chain Innovation Masterclass led by David Simchi-Levi I was hoping to speak with global corporations to see how they’re adapting to the new supply chain universe and share best practices with senior directors facing the same challenges. This Masterclass and experience exceeded my expectations. Through David’s knowledge and the discussion of real-world business challenges we jointly worked towards resolving many challenges we are facing within our corporations. For example, we discussed methods to implement demand sensing, how to capture actionable insights from predictive analytics models, and even how to focus on change management as supply chains continue to evolve in this advanced world. The Masterclass discussion was dynamic, filled with highly experienced and intelligent leaders.

How Gemba helped:

The Supply Chain Innovation Masterclass provided academic practice with real-world evaluations and strategies to resolve the complex business challenges we all face. You are with these leaders and professors for days and can talk about your issues with the world’s brightest thinkers. It is so much better than a consultant for one day. You have many thinking partners and experts in the room that can address many issues and share best practices to resolve them. What the Masterclass helped me with in particular was simplification of my supply chain operations. David Simchi-Levi made me realize that, although supply chains can get extremely complicated, there is always a way to simplify it, whether through technology or process improvement, to facilitate decision making ability.  Spending time at ZARA as part of the Masterclass allowed me to see exactly that in action. We used insights observed at ZARA and took it back to Johnson & Johnson to focus on even more simplification so that it leads to greater efficiency that ultimately benefits the customer and exceeds their expectations. We went one step further and applied the same simplified thinking taught by David and observed at ZARA to our technology stack roadmap planning globally, resulting in increased supply chain efficiency.