Our recent article on Opportunities in Your Supply Chain listed “Developing Supply Chain Talent” as a major opportunity. The “newest kid on the block” is the SCM Control Tower. I have been collecting personnel requests over the Web from recruiters for folks to staff these towers. All have some sort of job responsibilities, so we can compare responsibilities. Almost a third of these have salary too, which makes it very interesting.
A purchasing and supply company is looking for a “Control Tower Manager” in downtown London for £45,000 a year (almost $75,000). (a “global” tower). A transportation company is only paying about $10,000 in Manila (a “regional” tower).
SCM towers are sometimes regional, not centrally located, an example is DHL. Makes sense: at first, air traffic and railroads depended on numerous towers too. Railroads are moving to centralized control towers, for example, Metro North.
But we are heading for GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN CONTROL TOWERS.
I searched around for some folks to back me up. Ajesh Kapoor has written about A Broader Approach to Control Towers. I agree with him that the definition has different meanings depending on who you ask. Unfortunately, the vision and strategy are narrow and miss the mark on delivering true end-to-end visibility. Some companies, for example, have regional control towers that translate into outsourced activity to a 3PL or logistics partner.
