TOCICO

Most organizations are caught in the conflict between long term and short term. Most of the time, it is the short term which wins and long term is left to discussions in off-site sessions. Primary reasons for short-term focus comes from pressures of problems related to cash/working capital; increasing pressure to meet the sales numbers by the end of measurement period; and expediting orders as per customer urgency. All the above problems take away significant management bandwidth and hence long term takes a back seat. Typical long-term initiatives like developing new markets, building competencies, and development of vendors are shelved. Some organizations have created new departments to deal with the long term but lack of management focus on these initiatives make implementation very slow. At times, the new departments are disbanded to support the demands of the short term. So the only way out to deal with the long term is to remove the problems of the short term. The problems of short term emanate from the supply chain issues such as disharmony in supply chain. Learn how Fleetguard Filters have achieved complete harmony in its supply chain. Fleetguard Filters achieved its Viable Vision (VV) of increasing sales 4 times and profits from same market/ products in 4 years, while the market was growing at around 12%. Fleetguard is a market leader in India and supplies auto filters to the commercial vehicle segment. With the implementation of the strategy and tactic (S&T) tree, it has achieved availability for auto OEM at 99% (hence no expediting requests from OEM); availability in retail of near 100%, with nearly 24 inventory turns; after-market sales trend within a month has no skew towards end ( no pressure at month end); new product development (NPD) output is now 5 times more than what it was 3 years ago. Engineering has wiped out the queue of waiting projects hence it can react immediately to any new requests, as a result no expediting requests for top management; even with high growth. Very little time is spent in daily issues as no short-term issues exist. The entire supply chain is on autopilot, which is helping the top management focus only on the long term and further fuel the growth of the company. Last year the management focus was on strategic sourcing to ensure that SUSTAIN- capacity at suppliers does not deteriorate Fleetguard's decisive competitive edges of availability and inventory turns. This year it is focusing on developing competencies to capture markets for its next VV. Learn how Fleetguard is creating an organization for long term by having eliminated the 5 engines of disharmony.