In the purest sense rigor is strictness, severity or harshness when dealing with people or the full extreme severity of rules. In supply chain, rigor is about bringing discipline, rules, thoroughness, consistencies and framework to processes and operations. It is the establishment of customer and supplier requirements and expectations and holding true to them even when it is uncomfortable or inconvenient.
Too often we hear about how a supplier was unruly or unjust in its approach to an organization when offering its products and or services. This is where rigor plays a major role in creating predictable and consistent working relationships. Each organization is responsible for how it wants suppliers to engage them, offer products and deliver services. However, it is the responsibility of the organization to ensure there exists a clear process for them to follow and equally important that each internal customer of the organization has a process that it must follow when dealing with suppliers. Rigor is creating and diligently enforcing a framework that will be followed by customers and suppliers.
Rigor also applies internally to our own supply chain departments. What is the framework for sourcing? Is it repeatable? Do customers and suppliers have an illustrated roadmap on how it works? This area is one of the most confusing for suppliers and internal customers. If you ask a supply chain team how many sourcing processes they have, most will come back with one to several. In reality, when you map it out, the organization practices a multitude of sourcing processes, some internal to the supply chain department and some driven by customer departments.
I am not by any means suggesting one process serves all; it does not. However, if a supplier or customer has not been given a process to follow, it will make its own ad hoc process. Each group – customers and suppliers – is a problem solver. If the solution is not easily found and documented, it will pursue a process, one that most likely you will not like. Creating, training and diligently enforcing compliance is rigor; it is work. Developing documentation, process maps, timelines, and educating new staff, new suppliers and new supply chain personnel on an ongoing basis is rigor; it is work.
When we think about capital planning and budgeting, rigor comes to mind very quickly. For most organizations, rigor is more of a thought than practice. How many times do we see a high dollar capital equipment acquisition occur without rigor of the stated process? This lack of rigor is what creates unpredictable customer and supplier behaviors. This lack of rigor is what usually results in less than desirable costs. It is what contributes to the consistent cycle of capital fund shortages and operating expense increases.
Internally to our own customers, rigor creates alignment. Whether you are presenting your plan for this year’s sourcing activities, supplier utilization opportunities, distribution initiatives or capital equipment acquisition strategies – whatever plan it is – presenting it, speaking to it and educating your customers month by month produces alignment. That is rigor.
Too often it is believed that verbal communication or the existing sourcing model is what customer and suppliers know as the sourcing process. This could not be further from the truth. Your entire constituent base is always changing, and the need for re-education is critical for your success, including teaching your own department. Rigor is the adherence to a plan, a routine, but it must be repeatedly communicated and visible to all in order to be effective.
Think about your new-employee onboarding process: What are the critical processes that create department and organizational alignment, customer satisfaction and supplier management that should not be left to discovery but learned by rigorous training?
If we desire to achieve great results, it will not occur by happenstance and will certainly not occur when you have your department, customers and suppliers all rowing in different directions. If the results you seek are extraordinary, rigor will be the framework and discipline to get you there. Rigor is the inclusion of customer requirements, the due diligence of spend and utilization, the time for understanding the desired future state as well as the understanding of the current market.
Rigor is about going after the difficult. Rigor is prohibiting a wild card customer or supplier from doing his or her own process when the proper process has been established and is clearly understood. Rigor is taking non-compliant process issues and shining a light on them versus overlooking them. Rigor is stating loudly and consistently, “THIS IS HOW WE DO BUSINESS!” It is the demonstration of a process that is consistent, repeatable and predictable for all involved and for the good of the organization. It clearly establishes for all constituents that the organization acts and speaks in one voice.
Rigor in business operations is not strict adherence to process in absence of consideration of the variables such as costs, opportunity, timeline, value, good will, etc. Rigor is balanced by relevance. Rigor without some flexibility in comparing energy versus reward could leave you and your initiatives flat or negative, depending on circumstances. The level of rigor in process will always be different based on importance and financial and time considerations. Replacing a hospital roof next year will have a different process rigor versus replacing a roof that was damaged after a storm.
Rigor brings the framework, the discipline, and the effort to supply chain operations and sourcing to ensure success. Rigor must be balanced by relevance but not dissuaded by the uncomfortable or inconvenient. Rigor is work, but it enables your department, your organization and you to be successful.
Questions for thought:
- What is the one process that if you applied rigor would change operational results substantially?
- What process failure did you have this year would have been avoided if rigor would have been applied?
- What parts of your sourcing process do customers want more engagement?
- What parts of your sourcing process do suppliers wish you would apply more thoroughness to?
- Where would the executive team want you to apply more rigor?
Darren Vianueva is President and COO of CRG Solutions, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, a healthcare consulting firm specialized in the capital planning, acquisition and management of technology for healthcare institutions of all sizes.
