What are your company’s strategic objectives for improving performance, and what methods do you have available for achieving them?   First and foremost, and one of the most difficult tasks in starting any process improvement initiative, is clearly defining and understanding the compelling need for change, what’s commonly referred to as the “burning platform.” What is the strategic problem? Why is it problematic? How severe is it? 

The Convergence concept began development in 2002 with the formation of the Supply Chain Council’s Convergence Special Interest Group (SIG). Convergence is not intended to supplant other methodologies; rather it is intended to enhance the effectiveness of these initiatives by providing architecture and tools for planning and managing strategic enterprise transformation. Convergence is a methodology to visualize the entire system, identify strategic business objectives, and structure improvements as a practical approach to address current and future issues. The Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model complements Six Sigma and Lean methodologies, as well as other methodologies, with the structure for system-optimal improvements. SCOR adds a top-down system perspective and structure that increases the value of the other two approaches.  

With Convergence, the SCOR model provides a coordinating structure that focuses continuous improvement efforts on company performance. SCOR provides many tools to help identify strategic objectives, measure enterprise performance, stratify supply chains, catalog and communicate processes, and roll strategic objectives vertically down into the organization and horizontally across partners.

 

Convergence recognizes the relative strengths and limitations of the individual approaches, and brings together the different methodologies into a full spectrum approach. By using the coordinating structure of SCOR, a direct linkage is created between strategic objectives and improvement projects. “Drive-by kaizens” are replaced by a time-phased project portfolio of improvement initiatives that line up with what is driving the need at the top – the burning platform. This top-down approach starts with the end in mind, and aligns lower level activities to what’s actually needed to improve the future state of the business. Convergence establishes a coordinating architecture that bridges that gap between strategic enterprise planning, continuous improvement and measurable enterprise transformation.