The assessment framework
As these success factors crystallized (for an overview see
Figure 1), it became clear that not every supply chain works
this way. The time has come to give managers a simple tool to
assess their own VMI-readiness.
The developed framework is set up as a self-administered
questionnaire on 15 success factors along three dimensions
of the business (company, product and supplier). It permits a
margin for individual cases. With the support of their colleagues
and peers (as required), senior supply chain managers normally
should need less than 30 minutes to fill the questionnaire and
compute the VMI-readiness score of their firm.
The premise of the framework is simple: It is not sufficient for
any single factor, or even the group of factors, to achieve a high
score. Rather, it is the composite score of all features that reliably
predicts how ready the company would be to adopt VMI.
To emphasize a further distinction, each of the 15 factors can
be classified as either controllable or uncontrollable — either
within the influence of a firm or beyond it. For example, if a
company sells products with high demand variability or if the
company growth is not stable, the supply chain manager can
do little to change these characteristics in the short term. They
effectively constitute an uncontrollable environment in which
VMI will operate (should it be implemented). On the other