Grant: Everyone has to work cohesively to have a good handle on supply chain. We’ve adopted lean methodologies around collaboration, work groups, morning huddles, category huddles, and automated dashboards to ensure people from different departments are working with the same information. Then we make sure people have a chance to visit locations, so whether it’s a visit to a farm, greenhouse, or ship unloading, they gain a good feel of what the whole business does. Going forward, I think the employee of the future can’t be segmented into some narrow function; he or she needs to really see that there’s much more to supply chain. That’s how we can get the passion back into the produce business by having much wider opportunities for people.
Wrap-Up
The fresh produce industry presents many supply chain challenges that must be addressed. Our experts identified lean strategies and engaging talent with a broad perspective in this half of the roundtable and will discuss enabling technology in the second part as another key to building a successful enterprise.
Further, our participants recommend cohesively managing every link along the cold chain to simultaneously achieve food safety, in-stock availability, and customer satisfaction. Stay tuned!
