An Opinion Piece on Feedback
What’s the cost of feedback?
Most experts in supply chain management emphasise the importance of information sharing, automation and cooperation among participants. In business it is customary to hold data believing it will offer a competitive advantage; however, across supply chains the opposite is true. The more people are willing to share the more efficiently supply chains can run.
The beef industry is a supply chain, and one of the more complex ones. The cattle move in a linear motion from breeding to backgrounding to feedlot and processing however variations in weather, feed supply, genetics and consumer opinion put pressures on the system and distort what should be a predictable pattern. One of the biggest challenges facing those in the later stages of the supply chain is the consistent supply of high quality cattle. Buyers contend for supplier loyalty, price and volume however one lever that is heavily under utilised is feedback.
Studies on feedback in general have shown that feedback improves motivation, confidence and learning, and has been engrained in everything from education to airport bathroom stalls in order to lift performance. However, feedback fails when it is at given at the wrong time to the wrong person and with poor delivery. This posits the question why processor feedback (in the form of CSV or PDF) hasn’t moved the needle with cattle supplied to the abattoirs? Great data tools democratise the understanding of simple and complex data interactions and easily allow the user to get to the critical information points. So why aren’t we using this in red meat?
Is it time to set competitive advantage aside and realise cooperation lifts the entire industry?
