Just think of all the changes occurring in your organization.  New regulations.  Changing customers with product preferences.  New competitive product offerings.  New technologies.  New branding.  New business platforms.  New business models.  Compressed lifecycles.  Change is no longer gradual.   Change is rapid and abrupt.   

Disruptive changes are occurring in supply chains, management, and even all professions (quality, engineering, supply management, etc.).  As well, we believe general management is evolving into risk management.  What’s the driver?  VUCA.

WHAT IS VUCA?

Supply Chain Risk Management reflects the major changes occurring in today’s economy and marketplace.  What do I mean?  ISO 9001 is an international Quality Management System standard.  When ISO 9001 came out in 1987, the focus was on consistent quality.  It was a great idea for its time.   Quality management, quality assurance, and quality control were essential to a company’s competitiveness.

More than 30 years later, the emphasis is how to compete and innovate in a time of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) or what we call VUCA time.  Examples of VUCA are all around us.  As an example, a Black Swan event is a big bang or VUCA disruptor to an organization.  A Black Swan is a high consequence and low likelihood event that can disrupt a company’s supply chain.  A Black Swan can be climate change, hurricane, loss of a final-customer, or loss of a critical supplier.

In a world with interconnected supply chains, business and operational risks surface often.  Why?  Unexpected events occur more frequently.  For example, earthquakes, tsunamis, oil spills, increasing global warming, and loss of a single-source of products or services can rapidly impact a company and its supply chain potentially undermining the company’s reputation and its financials.

VUCA Time
Exposure to global risks is increasing and the consequences are ever more threatening.  Also, something as simple as 100-year events are occurring more frequently.

That is why we say: “we live in VUCA time.”

Bio:

Greg Hutchins PE and CERM (503.233.101 & GregH@QualityPlusEngineering.com)  is the founder of:

CERMAcademy.com
800Compete.com
QualityPlusEngineering.com
WorkingIt.com

He is the evangelist behind Future of Quality: Risk®.  He is currently working on the Future of Work and machine learning projects.

He is a frequent speaker and expert on Supply Chain Risk Management and cyber security.  His current books available on all platform are shown below: