Exploring the Language of Supply Chain Management

Ever wondered why we call it a "supply chain" and not a "demand chain"? Tune in to this captivating episode of the Chain Reaction Podcast, where we explore this intriguing question and more. We start by delving into the creative lexicon of Lewis Carroll, discussing how words like "boojum" and "chortle" have transformed our language. From there, we investigate the historical roots of logistics, tracing its evolution from Napoleon's era to ancient civilizations. A personal anecdote about organizing a European Masters course in Athens brings these concepts to life, illustrating the power of exchanging ideas and friendly debate in advancing the field of supply chain management.

In another thought-provoking segment, we tackle the often-daunting world of technical jargon in supply chains, back-end logistics, and IT operations. We'll share practical tips on how to immerse yourself in this specialized language through various resources—whether it's books, podcasts, or online communities. Highlighting the creative contributions of authors like Shakespeare, we underscore the importance of continuous learning and adaptation. Plus, my glossary in the supply chain strategies book gets a special mention as a go-to resource for newcomers. Don't miss this episode if you're eager to enhance your understanding of the pivotal role language plays in shaping supply chain discussions and meanings.

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Chapters

• 0:02 Words in Supply Chain Management
• 15:10 Navigating Technical Jargon in Business

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hi, tony Hines, here You're listening to the Chain Reaction Podcast, all about supply chain advantage. Well, thanks for stopping by. We've got a great episode coming your way in just a few minutes, so stick around, stay tuned and find out more. Well, have you ever wondered the influence that writers have over our lives and how they influence how we think and what we do? And it comes in all sorts of forms and shapes, doesn't it?

Speaker 1: 0:29

Lewis Carroll, or Charles Dodgson as he was called, was quite an interesting character and he was brought up in Durresbury in Cheshire and he attended Oxford University and he invented so many words that we still use today. And they're strange words, and I'm going to just think about a couple of those before we start into today's episode, which is all about the words we use in supply chains. But think about this, the boojum. I bet you haven't heard that word, or you may have done if you live in somewhere like Baja California because they named a tree, a species of tree native to that part of the world, after the Boojum, which was a Lewis Carroll invention, the Boojum word. It's a particularly dangerous variety of snark and we all know about the snark. A supersonic cruise missile was also named the Bujum, and we've all had a good laugh and we've talked about it as being a chortle, a noisy chuckle. Once again, it comes from Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass, written in 1871. And I love the word Frabjoice, a wonderful, fabulous word. It's a blend of fabulous and joyous. Oh, frabjoice Day, caloo, calay, it's in the Jabberwocky. They're great, aren't they, all these words? But we do the same today, but we do it in different ways, perhaps not as creative as Carol, but we name things and then we use the jargon.

Speaker 1: 2:04

And so today we're going to talk about jargon in supply chains, not in a galumphing way, clumsily or heavily, as Carol might have said, and not in a nonsensical way as in the Jabberwocky, nor in a mimsy way to blend the miserable and flimsy. But we have a portmanteau of words, a words, as Carol might have said, merging the sounds and meanings of two different words. A portmanteau, a case used in journeying which contains clothing and comes from the French porter to carry, plus a manteau which was a clock. So as time ticks in our supply chain, we can think through these different words and we're not going to be slithy about it and we don't have to worry about imaginary animals such as the snark in supply chains. We've only got to worry about the real animals, that's, us ourselves. No imaginary characters here.

Speaker 1: 3:01

So where to begin? Well, we might begin with the word supply chain itself. It's a strange term, isn't it? Supply chain, two words put together like a portmanteau to mean something in the way we use it A chain, lots of links joined together to supply. Well, that's how we use it, isn't it? It's a supply chain. And you might ask the question why wasn't it a demand chain? Because there is such a thing as a demand chain, isn't it? That's what customers order. And then there's a chain of events that happens behind demand. Well, of course, supply chains are just the push side of the chain and demand is the pull side of the chain. And of course, if you read books on supply chain management, they talk about demand, pull, supply, push. So it's about demand and supply when we talk about supply chains. But we just happen to focus on the operational side, which is the side behind the customer order, where we happen to put things together to get those materials and goods and services to the customer. And that's why we call it supply chain Interesting word when you break it down and you think about how the word came about.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Many years ago I went out to Athens to organise a European Masters course which was going to be developed in guess what? Logistik, yeah, logistics, and the interesting part of that course, apart from all the pleasant food and the sights of Athens, and, of course, the people from different parts of Europe, from Sweden, from France, from Germany, from Switzerland, all the people I met. We sat around and debated what we would include in this master's course. And when we think about logistics, the French contingent at that meeting had quite a lot to say about it and they put down the history of logistic to Napoleon and they said that Napoleon had been the founder of logistic. Well, we had to have a debate around that over some good food under the Acropolis, and we did and we talked about. Well, it's an interesting take. But what about all the logistics that went into the building of the pyramids in Egypt and all the logistics that were employed by the Roman army to set up their various operations throughout Europe? Or if we go to a different continent and we move to China and we think of all the great empires in China or in India or other places in the world, there's a larger history to logistic than perhaps that put forward by our French friends around the table that evening. But it was a very pleasant discussion and it was very interesting.

Speaker 1: 6:07

And that's the way we learn about things by exchanging ideas, thinking about things and, of course, debating, putting the evidence forward, a claim backed up with evidence, and then arguing in a friendly way, not in a nasty way. Rather, this sort of argument takes the form that philosophers engage in and if we think back to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle I think it was Aristotle who said that Zeno was the founder of a dialectic method and that dialectic method is still with us today as it moved forward through the centuries, as an enduring idea. And it's the idea that we have a thesis. Thesis is an argument. Somebody puts forward an antithesis, an antithesis which is the other side of the argument, the other side of the coin, as we might say in colloquial terms, and we arrive at agreement, which is synthesis, and that's the idea that people can agree with. And that's what we do. That's how we generate our ideas and sit down and talk about things until we come to an agreement where there's shared understandings. And we do that in the workplace, we do that in our supply chains. We'll identify a cause of something, we'll debate what the cause is, why something's not happening or is happening in a particular way, and we'll look for evidence based on the claims that people are making of why something's happening. And then we'll talk about alternative explanations. And once we've gone through those alternative explanations we might reach a position that we can all agree on and then we'll act. So that's the idea of dialectic method, and of course it was promoted by very many philosophers. And of course Hegel was a promoter in recent times of the dialectic method, an approach also popularised by that famous writer for the New York Tribune, karl Marx, when he wrote his Das Kapital, all about historical materialism. That was a form of argument using a development of the Hegelian dialectic. And this teaches us perhaps another lesson, insofar as ideas that endure through time do so because they have the strongest evidence to support the claim for that particular idea, popularized and has become how we understand what happens in our business operations, moving goods from the production through to distribution and on to customers as a supply chain. It sticks because people associate the word and its meaning with what happens in reality. Hence with what happens in reality. Hence the argument prevails and it prevails until new evidence arises to overturn that argument in an antithesis.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Before we reach a new synthesis, well, let's return to our ideas and our words in supply chain and we'll progress further. Well, in supply chain we have all kinds of words and people outside of supply chains would call it jargon, but we use them because of the meaning and so on and so forth. And in my supply chain book I have a glossary of terms, and one reason for that is to introduce new readers, those new to studying supply chains about some of the words we use. I mean backhauling it sounds as if we've got some coal sacks on our back, but it doesn't mean that at all. It's a return load on a delivery. We backhaul, or we backorder orders that can't be fulfilled at the time that most of the order is shipped. Those orders are shipped and filled, or filled and shipped when the goods come in. And Bill of Lading and Bill of Material they sound like members of Robin Hood's Merry Men, don't they? Bill of Lading a contract stating a carrier has received goods and has taken responsibility for delivery. And Bill of Material a detailed schedule for materials required in manufacturing operations. Blockchain a new word Data within a blockchain is distributed through the chain to members of a network. It's a cyber security issue.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Some terms like price optimisation, outsourcing, quick response those are fairly self-explanatory and don't take much imagination to work out. But we have unusual terms like poke-a-yoke that's one of my favorites A mistake-proofing device or a procedure to prevent defects during manufacture. Poke-a-yoke Sounds like you stick a pin in an egg, doesn't it? Then we have words that have meaning in other contexts. So, for example, six sigma. It's a mathematical term, a relationship of six sigmas, where sigma stands for six standard deviations around a mean Minus three plus three. And we argue that 99.99% of production falls within six sigma when we talk about zero defects. So if you want zero defects, you have to have good production within plus and minus three sigma. Well, fairly straightforward, but it's an imported word from statistics.

Speaker 1: 12:00

And then we use brief words in the warehouse, like SKU, stock keeping unit. But people walk around saying have you seen the SKU for blah blah, blah, blah, have you seen this SKU? And so on. But a SKU is a stock keeping unit. And we speak of milk runs, which sounds like we ought to be talking about a marathon or a local race. But a milk run is simply a routing of supplies or deliveries that make multiple stops en route, just like a milk truck did.

Speaker 1: 12:34

And you'll hear people speak of OEMs, which simply means original equipment manufacturer, but people abbreviate it to OEM and it's another piece of jargon used in supply chains. When we talk of OEMs, it's often a component that's put into another piece of equipment, so we have SKUs inside computers or tablets with parts supplied by OEMs. There's an example for you. And then we have terms like Kanban. There's a whole host of words that are imported from Japan and they come from the Japanese auto manufacturers, particularly Toyota, where they speak of Kaizen, with the Muda, mura and Murai, the different types of waste, smooth flows and removing unevenness it's removing difficulties out of the flow. And the Kanban, a visual card system of inventory that operates a pull system of production so that inventories are only supplied when they're needed in demand. And we have terms like kiretsu, a network of Japanese firms with historical or equity linkages in a vertical or horizontal chain. So it's a network.

Speaker 1: 13:54

It's a fine line, of course, between jargon and technical language, and it's important, when possible, to explain the terminology to people who are new to it, so don't just assume that they will know, it's your job as a manager to actually encourage and motivate people and therefore at the first opportunity you should request that people openly discuss the terminologies with you so that you can help them understand the technical language and, of course, any jargon that's used in your particular organization, because no doubt there is internal jargon to your organization too, because we all have it, don't we? If you think about the IT side of your business and how that operates in supply chains and outside of supply chains too, we have technical jargon that we use all the time, don't we? We talk about API, which is a software that allows communication between different applications. We never say the application programming interface, API, which is a software that allows communication between different applications. We never say the application programming interface, which is what it stands for. We just say you need an API.

Speaker 1: 15:10

And when we talk about back-end in computer language, we're talking about the server side of an application that provides the functionality which is often invisible to the user. But we do that in supply chains too. We talk about the back-end logistics or the back-end of supply or the back-end in terms of the back office, and then we talk about bugs when we're talking about computer programs with coding errors that disrupt normal operations. We talk about DevOps, which are just practices blending software development and IT operations short for development operations and we talk about the front end, the customer facing side, of an application or a business. And we talk about OOP, o-o-p, object Oriented Programming, for example, and the various names we give to programs and programming. We talk about version control, tracking, changes that allow users to restore earlier versions, and we talk about web servers and more besides.

Speaker 1: 16:17

Now, if you're listening to this program and you suffer from all this tech jargon you're on the receiving end, but you don't understand what's happening with the language that you used in supply chains or in your business or in your particular roles, then how do you overcome the problem? Well, you have to immerse yourself in it. You've got to surround yourself in the technical jargon, read the blogs, articles and documents, listen to podcasts like this one and get yourself aware of what's happening in your field of interest and pay attention in detail to those terms that people are using. And if you don't know what they mean, just ask them. Ask them what it means. Oh, I didn't quite catch that. What is that? Don't be afraid to ask.

Speaker 1: 17:02

You can take online courses and tutorials in particular areas. If you want to find out things, you can join communities or debates, online forums and so on to try and find out more about a particular aspect that you're interested in, and there's no way better than learning by experience, learning by doing something, so you'll pick up the technology as you move along. We all pick things up as we get immersed in a subject and a topic and attend meetings and conferences where they're discussing things related to the job, so that you can listen to how other people are using the technical language or the jargon, so that you become familiar with the language of what's happening in supply chains. We talk about variables, loops, functions, algorithms. What does all that mean? Well, if you don't know, you have to find out, and people sometimes, of course dare I say it misuse the technical term or even misuse the jargon. They make mistakes. So don't be complacent and don't just accept it. If you don't understand something, just call it out and ask what does that mean? Oh, and don't be afraid to say things like I don't understand, can you tell me more about that? So it's very important that you develop a way of dealing with things that are unknown to you, that you want to find out more about. And if somebody says, oh, it means this, and you ask them to explain it and they can't, you say, oh, is there anywhere I can find out more about that? Art? You say, ah, is there anywhere I can find out more about that? Is there anyone I can talk to? Can I read something? So, again, important to be open in the discussion and, of course, it's opportune of me to say at this point if there are supply chain terms that you're unfamiliar with, you could try as a starting point my glossary in my supply chain strategies book, because I've got a fairly comprehensive glossary of terms in there. Strategies book, because I've got a fairly comprehensive glossary of terms in there. And that's always a good starting point. And you can always search on the net too for topics, or these days, you can ask ChatGPT to tell you about a particular item. So many ways to find out. Well, let's return to where we started with this particular discussion.

Speaker 1: 19:21

We began talking about Lewis Carroll, but he wasn't the only person that made up words. He was the master wordsmith behind Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and he made up many whimsical words that were a joy to behold. But Charles Dickens did too, and his characters used phrases like cheesiness, which didn't really exist previously, rampage, snobbish, flummox and doormat. And Jonathan Swift, of course, gave the term Yahoo. Now, that might be familiar to some of you that have email addresses which are Yahoo. Well, it comes from Jonathan Swift, remember him. Mark Twain gave us the word stalwart, someone who's hard and uncompromising. Dr Seuss gave us the word nerd, a strange little animal in one of his books. And Shakespeare, of course, the master, invented thousands of words, common ones such as bump, eyesore, bedazzled. And Tolkien gave us lots of words too. He gave us tween. So there are many, many words.

Speaker 1: 20:37

And when I think about John Milton, paradise Lost, the epic poem. And, of course, he named the capital of hell pandemonium. Well, when we think about pandemonium, of course that brings us right back to supply chains. Well, I can't improve on that, so I'm going to leave it there for this particular episode. Hope you've enjoyed it. It's been a little lighter than perhaps some of the episodes recently, so we've had a chance to be a little more thoughtful in our approach today, and perhaps it's taken us away in some respects from supply chains, but brought us back to supply chains in the end. So I'm Tony Hines, I'm signing off, and I'll see you next time when we'll return to normality. Or numberality there's a word for you or supply chainery? Hmm, that's got connotations, hasn't it? I'm Tony Hines. I'm signing off. Bye for now, and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, because then you'll be first to know when an episode drops.