Rapidez, flexibilidade e "amélias"

"In Boyd’s language, the pilot who won in air combat was the one who was able to “go around the loop” faster. The “loop” was a sequence—observation, orientation, decision, and action. Boyd taught that if you could go around this loop faster than an opponent, the opponent would become disoriented and confused and you would win.

...

In business, competition quickness is normally most important in customer responsiveness and in the cycle of new product development and introduction.

...

Boyd’s insight was that being in the lead may be less important than having your opponent believe you are in the lead. Thinking you are behind can induce mistakes. Be oriented to the combat, and be fast to observe, decide, and act."

Ler aquele "In business, competition quickness is normally most important in customer responsiveness and in the cycle of new product development and introduction" e pensar nas "amélias" sempre a mendigar um apoiozinho do papá-Estado.

Trechos retirados de "The Crux - How Leaders Become Strategists" de Richard P. Rumelt.

"when speed is low, development requires big investments"

O meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras enviou-me o link para este artigo "Six ingredients of agile organizational design" com o comentário:

"Só agora associei o Scrum como uma resposta para planeamento do Mongo!"

Caro amigo... até apetece exclamar: Duh!!!

Li o artigo duas vezes e das duas vezes sublinhei este trecho:

"Nowadays, a company’s chances of survival are low if it takes too long to create (new) products. Our company becomes slow if we need a number of teams, each producing a part of the product, to be able to create possible customer value. The specialised team approach creates many dependencies between teams when we try to create customer value. We only know if our product (or change) is successful after releasing it in the hands of the customer because that is when we get real feedback and our assumptions are validated. The slower our company is, the longer it takes before we get customer feedback, i.e. return on investment (if any). That’s why when speed is low, development requires big investments." 

E sorri ao relacionar com a série "Acerca da rapidez" e com as novas regras de xadrez. Mongo tem tudo a ver com rapidez, flexibilidade e personalização.

E acerca de:

"Some teams do not even know what value they are creating from a customer point of view: the workers have never seen a real customer or they don’t have one because they deliver so-called “products” to another department."

Fez-me recordar um texto citado aqui no blogue recentemente:

"Leaders who connect employees with end users motivate higher performance, measured in terms of revenue as well as supervisors’ ratings.
...
Customers, clients, patients, and others who benefit from a company’s products and services motivate employees by serving as tangible proof of the impact of their work, expressing appreciation for their contributions, and eliciting empathy, which helps employees develop a deeper understanding of customers’ needs."

Nichos, co-criação e intimidade à escala

"Dalton, Ohio is an unlikely place to find fresh insight into how to thrive in a chaotic 21st-century economy.[Moi ici: Pensem no século XXI, na internet, em toda a parfernália tecnológica e, depois, pensem numa empresa de gente Amish que cumpre os preceitos Amish, que não pode ter electricidade da rede ligada ao negócio, que não pode usar a internet, ... como prosperam?]
...
A company like Pioneer could not have been nearly as successful in a previous era. It is, in its own way, thoroughly modern and embodies what I call the “passion economy”
...
The tools of modern commerce—easy access to sophisticated shipping and logistics, the ability to reach and connect with customers all over the globe—are now available even to the most technologically unsophisticated businessperson. This allows something new: intimacy at scale, in which companies can create highly specialized products that reach customers thinly spread around the world.[Moi ici: Quando leio estas coisas lembro-me sempre da lição alemã que aprendi em 2010 - ""pursue niche strategies that combine product specialization with geographic diversification", "they concentrate their often limited resources on niche market segments that they can dominate worldwide.", e de Conrado Adolfo e o fim da geografia, apesar de Ghemawat]
.
The Pioneer business model would be hard to pitch to a group of investors. The core addressable market is fewer than 25,000 farmers, with decidedly below-average purchasing power. That market cannot be reached through digital ads, TV or radio. The products themselves are big and bulky and need to be shipped from rural Ohio to remote customers across North America. [Moi ici: Sabe quem são os seus clientes? Sabe o que procuram e valorizam? Sabe quais são as suas ansiedades e sonhos? Sabe quais são os seus medos e dores? Sabe o que é sucesso para eles?]
...
Amish farmers are increasingly shifting from bulk commodity grains to higher-value produce, which means they need entirely different kinds of gear. [Moi ici: Interessante esta nota acerca da fuga à comoditização por parte de uma comunidade que não pode usar tecnologia moderna e tudo o que apoia o eficientismo da quantidade] Many Amish are moving north, leaving their historic districts in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana for relatively cheap farmland in the deindustrializing Rust Belt and the prairie out west. This means they are farming colder, rockier ground and need plows that are stronger and more pliable.
...
In today’s economy, the narrowness and complexity of Pioneer’s market is actually a strength. While 25,000 farmers aren’t enough to attract the full attention of the big players like John Deere, Kubota and Caterpillar, they are more than enough to support Pioneer and several other Amish farm equipment makers, all of which are growing healthily.
...
Companies like Pioneer will not replace large firms, which are getting bigger and more dominant in the American economy.
...
But companies like Pioneer offer an alternative path. By focusing obsessively and passionately on an audience that they know uniquely well, and by embracing the tools that will help them serve that audience while rejecting those that won’t, such small businesses are able to thrive in the 21st-century economy."

Quando em "Acerca da rapidez (parte II)" rematamos no final "Talvez os nichos sejam o futuro, talvez a co-criação seja o futuro." estamos a sugerir o mesmo caminho referido no último trecho sublinhado. Focar um nicho e servir esse nicho como ninguém"

Trechos retirados de "An Amish Lesson for Small Business Success"

Speed to market

Um conjunto de frases retiradas do podcast "Inside H&M’s $4B Inventory Challenge | Inside Fashion" que o amigo Pedro Alves me enviou.

"Focus should be speed to market

Speed has to be the primary asset and capability. Speed is a way to reduce cost and reduce risk.

Cost of lost sales

Cost of high markdowns

Cost of high inventory

Speed is more than being trendy

Speed is primary

A very digital world but it is an analog supply chain depending on lowest cost countries and long lead times supplied by sea

The high cost of low cost: there is a cost to being slow and being in 12 month design cycles and 6/9 months delivery cycles."

E regressamos a 2006 e a um texto sobre isto "O regresso dos clientes" que cita um artigo de 2004. Ou seja, alguém em 2004 publicou um artigo sobre os perigos do modelo eficientista, e em 2019 ainda  vemos tantas empresas mergulhadas nesse modelo. Algumas com sucesso e muitas a perder dinheiro e valor das marcas. Isto faz-me recordar um trecho retirado de um livro que não consigo identificar, julgo que de Adrian Slywotzky, e tenho 8 ou 9 livros dele, sobre o negócio dos televisores a preto e branco. Quando apareceu a TV a cores os televisores a preto e branco ficaram condenados à morte. Uns concorrentes sairam logo desse mercado, outros foram empurrados e mortos sem alternativa, até que ficaram aqueles que assumiram esse mercado até ao fim e ganharam dinheiro a explorar os nichos em que uma televisão a cores é suficiente porque o que conta é o preço, como o das televisões para segurança.

Três grupos:

• os que agem ao primeiro sinal e partem em exploration de novas alternativas;
• os que por cegueira ou incapacidade continuam a sua vida de exploitation através de local searches; e
• os que assumem a exploitation até ao fim, conscientes de que mesmo assim, terão de fazer a sua mudança, porque os dois primeiros grupos vão libertar quota de mercado, voluntária ou involuntariamente.

Voltando ao podcast: em que grupo se enquadra a H&M?

É que não basta decidir mudar...

"First, strategy exists in managers’ minds—in their theories about the world and their company’s place in it. Second, strategy is embodied, reified in a firm’s activities, and routines. Understanding the origins of strategy therefore requires a grasp of how its two aspects— the mental and the physical—jointly come into being. That is, it requires the characterization of a two-part search process. One part occurs in the world of cognition and comprises the mental processes that mold particular theories about the firm and its environment. The other unfolds in the world of action and consists of mechanisms that shape what a company actually does."

Além da decisão é preciso re-orientar toda uma organização habituada e moldada a uma certa forma de trabalhar. Basta comprar o que está por trás da Zara e o que está por trás da H&M antes de chegar à prateleira.


Trecho retirado de "On the Origin of Strategy: Action and Cognition over Time" de Giovanni Gavetti, e Jan W. Rivkin, publicado em Organization Science Vol. 18, No. 3, May–June 2007, pp. 420–439.

Alterações que podem ter implicações ...

Alterações que podem ter implicações para a indústria portuguesa:

• encomendas mais pequenas;
• mais encomendas feitas para reposição;
• menos tempo entre a data de recepção da encomenda e a data da sua entrega;
• mais encomendas colocadas na Europa do que na Ásia?

Na sequência de "France Moves To Ban The Destruction Of Unsold Luxury Goods In Favor Of Recycling":

"The French government announced an end to the destruction of unsold non-food stock earlier this week, calling time on a practice that is common in the luxury retail sector. More than $730 million of returns and unsold inventory are routinely thrown away or destroyed by consumer goods retailers in France, and the practice is widespread in the luxury sector in an effort to maintain label exclusivity. The current value of goods thrown away or destroyed is five times more than those given away." 

 Não é só no "common in the luxury retail sector". Recordar:

• "How Amazon destroys millions of new items it can’t sell with everything from TVs to kitchen equipment, books and nappies dumped in landfill sites";
• "Taking stock of fashion’s $210bn inventory problem"
• "Destroying Unsold Clothes Is Fashion’s Dirty Secret. And We’re Complicit."

speed = value

Às vezes estou a ler um texto e não consigo deixar de exclamar:

- DUH!

Desta vez foi com "Fashion Needs a New Business Model. Speed is the Answer":

"call out the conventional supply chain model as “dead.” The same report downgraded Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger parent PVH for the first time in eight years. Although Calvin Klein sales increased by $876 million since 2013, profit declined over that period by $20 million. PVH’s inventory turns hit all-time lows, while total inventory hit all-time highs. Sales growth based on higher inventory risk, the analysts argued, is no longer acceptable.
...
As an alternative, they offered a new thesis: speed = value. Cowen demonstrates that even modest change in speed equates to gross margin improvement, a model which can be projected across the sector and to clothing and accessories.
...
Supply chains must move faster if they are to be more responsive to accelerating changes in demand. More important than cutting weeks of time out of the design-to-delivery calendar is building a link between retail supply flexibility and market value. Citing work by Warren H. Hausman of Stanford University, the critical metric is capital based on process innovation that reduces finished goods’ lead times from months to weeks.
The source of being fast is supply flexibility in the first mile of the supply chain, in contrast to last mile logistics. This means upstream management to delay – or postpone -- finished goods commitments. The impact of this strategy is to reduce or remove fashion uncertainty and exploit much shorter working capital cycles.
...
Speed, in summary, is not an operational challenge in sourcing alone. It is a firm-wide cultural commitment to speed decision-making, to be responsive to trends and to synchronise and share value across partners."

Recordo:

• Janeiro de 2007 - Flexigurança, fiscalidade e competitividade 
• Dezembro de 2009 - Aproveitar as nossas armas
• Fevereiro de 2012 - Cadeias de fornecimento mais curtas
• Março de 2012 - Hora da batota?

"Avé, Avé, Avé Maria"

Quem me conhece sabe que às vezes começo a cantar em modo rápido uma versão do "Avé, Avé, Avé Maria" como outros contam até 10, para não hiperventilar e perder a cabeça a dizer coisas de que me possa arrepender. Claro que a maior partes das vezes é usada para demonstrar o meu desacordo, ou quase desespero com o que acabei de ouvir.

Apeteceu-me cantar um "Avé, Avé, Avé Maria" ao ler em Novembro de 2018, como se fosse uma novidade descoberta recentemente:

"“O envolvimento dos vários stakeholders da cadeia de internacionalização faz com que as empresas aumentem a sua quota no mercado externo e o sucesso passa por agilizar processos, mais do que reduzir custos ou outros aspetos que se mantém relevantes”"

Afinal, o que é que pregamos neste blogue desde 2005 ou 2006?

• Uma adega? Não uma "boutique" de vinhos! (Junho de 2006)
• Como assegurar a sustentabilidade desta comunidade? (Outubro de 2006)
• Flexigurança, fiscalidade e competitividade (Janeiro de 2007)
• Quem se concentra na defesa do passado, perde a oportunidade de ganhar o futuro (Maio de 2007)
• Flexibilidade, flexibilidade, flexibilidade (Julho de 2007) 
• Tirem-me deste filme (parte III de IV) (Julho de 2008)
• Pregarás o Evangelho do Valor (Março de 2011)

Quem é que contou esta "novidade"?

"afirmou Jorge Rocha de Matos, presidente da Fundação AIP,"

Rocha de Matos? Ainda não se reformou? Ah! Arranjaram-lhe uma prateleira de onde continua a controlar. Como é que alguém se mantém tanto tempo à frente de organizações privadas?

Trecho inicial retirado de "Agilizar é palavra de ordem na nova estratégia das exportações"

“Globalization is becoming regionalization, and regionalization is becoming intra-national,”

A propósito de "More Factories Crop Up Closer to Customers":

"The largest share of manufacturers in at least a decade is spending to expand facilities, as companies look to build plants closer to their customers to offset record-high trucking costs and seek out pockets of available workers in a tight labor market.
.
Twelve percent of U.S. manufacturers that invested in added capacity at domestic factories in the second quarter did so through building expansions, according to the Census Bureau, the highest proportion in the decade that metric has been released. Manufacturing construction spending hit a 16-month high in September, according to the Census Bureau. Executives are making some of those investments in new factories to alleviate rising transport bills and supply-chain bottlenecks.
...
as the company seeks to make its products as close to customers as possible to speed up delivery times and cut logistics costs.
...
Companies building plants nearer to customers say the investment costs can be made up in faster turnaround times and increased orders.
...
Some companies also are trying to source more parts locally to mitigate the impact of U.S. tariffs on some foreign goods, said executives at Flex Ltd., which makes and ships products—including shoes and personal electronics— for other companies.
.
“Globalization is becoming regionalization, and regionalization is becoming intra-national,” said Tom Linton, Flex’s supply-chain officer.""

A mim ninguém me tira a ideia de que Mongo tem um dedo importante nesta evolução: proximidade, rapidez, flexibilidade, interacção, co-criação

Muito mais do que rapidez e proximidade

A propósito de, "In an age of super-fast fashion, Mexico and Turkey may be the new China", interessante que mais de dez anos depois as consultoras grandes chegaram à carta da proximidade. Recordar este postal de 2008, "Um mundo de oportunidades", acerca da importância da proximidade.

Qual o problema do artigo?

Selecciona uma variável, a proximidade, e mantém todas as outras constantes. Quem diz que a rapidez da concepção à prateleira vai ser a única variável a mudar? E, por exemplo, o tamanho médio das encomendas?

"a natural fit for their agile development philosophies"

"Domestic manufacturing enables companies like Burrow and Chapter 3 to continually refine their designs and ramp production up and down in response to customer feedback. They can also ship directly to consumers, reducing delivery times.
...
“[Burrow] can send over an idea to me or my husband, and sometimes in the same day we can mock up a modification of something,” Schock says. “We can get the email, walk downstairs to the plant, and pull it together.”
.
She adds: “The consumer, if they want more choices, you’re going to need to have shorter lead times and smaller quantities. Importing doesn’t adhere to those things.”
...
he and others are discovering that domestic manufacturing is a natural fit for their agile development philosophies. “I’ve made stuff in China, it’s a huge pain in the ass. You can’t be very reactive in your iteration process, and there are high minimum order quantities,” Kan says. “The cool thing about the internet is that you can make changes very quickly. Taking some of that to the physical goods world is really good.”"

Demoram tanto a perceber isto?

Trechos retirados de "From Mexico To Mississippi: Why This Sofa Startup Is Now “Made In The USA”"

"o destino é este constante subir, crescer e, depois, ser suplantado por outros"

"Zara fue pionera en el concepto de moda rápida en la década de 1980. Fue la primera en desarrollar un método de reacción rápida a las tendencias cambiantes, utilizando cadenas de suministro ágiles basadas en la producción de abastecimiento cerca de la sede para acelerar sus "plazos de entrega" que desde el comienzo del proceso de diseño hasta llegar a las tiendas tardaba semanas.
.
Pero los nuevos competidores crecen rápidamente, sin presión por la propiedad de las tiendas físicas, acercan la producción a la distribución y a la constante renovación de la mercancía.
.
Boohoo.com, fundada en la ciudad británica de Manchester en 2006, opera en un modelo de "prueba y repetición" por el cual produce pequeños lotes y aumenta la producción de los que mejor se venden. Más de la mitad de sus productos se fabrican en Gran Bretaña.
.
La compañía, cuyas ventas se duplicaron el año pasado, dijo que tenía plazos de entrega tan cortos como dos semanas. Missguided, que también tiene su sede en Manchester, ha dicho que sus plazos de entrega pueden ser de tan solo una semana."

Esta é a beleza da história da evolução da vida na Terra. Quando os governos não protegem os incumbentes, o destino é este constante subir, crescer e, depois, ser suplantado por outros:


Trecho retirado de "Así utiliza Zara la tecnología para mantenerse líder en la industria de la moda"

Babel e zombies

"In March, Zara-owner Inditex reported its smallest gross profit margin in a decade; 56.3 percent in the 2017 fiscal year, compared with 57 percent in 2016. While comparable-store sales were still up 5 percent in the second half of 2017, it was the slowest growth the retailer has seen in three years.
...
But the biggest problems facing fast fashion are not linked to social concerns. Today, perhaps the primary threats to fast fashion are digital and faster fashion.
.
Last year, sales at the Manchester-based retailer Boohoo — which offers ultra-cheap, ultra-trendy clothes, mostly through e-commerce — were up 97 percent to £579.8 million, or about $800 million. (Boohoo also owns NastyGal and PrettyLittleThing.) Boohoo may be tiny compared to its more established competitors but its model could have serious impact.
.
More than half of Boohoo’s products are made in the UK and it has invested in local websites and fulfillment warehouses, which means it can get product to its customer even faster, in many cases, than traditional fast fashion players, whose first-mover advantage is waning.
.
At the same time, traditional fast fashion continues to lag in digital."

E que tal viajar a Maio de 2006 para ler o que se escrevia neste blogue?

"Preparando-se para pequenas quantidades, muita flexibilidade e em vez de duas épocas por ano… 52 épocas por ano."

E não me admiraria nada que a suckiness também tivesse responsabilidades no cartório. Os gigantes, por mais rápidos que sejam podem sempre ser ultrapassados por quem seja ainda mais rápido, mais focado e com uma melhor estória.

Pobres sociedades que protegem os incumbentes...

Depois de cair o BES e a PT só falta cair a EDP para estar feita a grande reforma estrutural da economia portuguesa.

— Ricardo Oliveira ☕️ (@rpOliveira) June 2, 2017

Trechos retirados de "Fast Fashion's Biggest Threat Is Faster Fashion"

Até a Sonae

"A Berg Outdoor está a apostar na produção em Portugal para internacionalizar a marca de artigos de desporto e vida ao ar livre da Sonae e, no segmento têxtil, toda a oferta para o mercado externo é agora 100% portuguesa. A viragem da produção têxtil asiática para o Made in Portugal acompanha a nova coleção outono/inverno 2018, depois de a empresa, com sede no Porto, ter reunido um grupo de mais de 20 fornecedores num raio de 60 quilómetros. Os custos de produção podem subir, mas isso acaba por ser compensado. "A proximidade significa mais flexibilidade, maior controlo dos processos, mais rapidez no desenvolvimento do produto, mais garantia de qualidade, muito mais agilidade", explica Miguel Tolentino, diretor-geral da Berg Outdoor, confiante na mais-valia de uma solução que permite acompanhar todo o ciclo de inovação de forma próxima. Ao mesmo tempo, a empresa pode navegar a onda positiva "do trabalho de reinvenção da indústria têxtil nacional, com um foco na qualidade, na tecnicidade, na inovação".”

Estamos em 2018, mais de 10 anos depois de "Flexigurança, fiscalidade e competitividade". Demorou  11 anos mas agora até a Sonae, empresa onde reina o paradigma do custo mais baixo (e aqui), aderiu ao que este blogue aconselhava.

“Berg aposta na produção nacional e ruma à Eslováquia”, Caderno de Economia do semanário Expresso de 3 de Fevereiro de 2018.

"a problem has different solutions on different days"

"Most of us would consider it unwise to do something before we are fully prepared; before the equipment is optimally in place and our workers well trained. But as the reader will discover, that's the situation we found ourselves in. And in researching this book, we discovered that that is the situation leaders and organizations far from any battlefield face every day.
...
The Task Force hadn't chosen to change; we were driven by necessity. Although lavishly resourced and exquisitely trained, we found ourselves losing to an enemy that, by traditional calculus, we should have dominated. Over time we came to realize that more than our foe, we were actually struggling to cope with an environment that was fundamentally different from anything we'd planned or trained for. The speed and interdependence of events had produced new dynamics that threatened to overwhelm the time-honored processes and culture we'd built.
.
Little of our transformation was planned. Few of the plans that we did develop unfolded as envisioned. Instead, we evolved in rapid iterations, changing—assessing—changing again. Intuition and hard-won experience became the beacons, often dimly visible, that guided us through the fog and friction. Over time we realized that we were not in search of the perfect solution—none existed. The environment in which we found ourselves, a convergence of twenty-first century factors and more timeless human interactions, demanded a dynamic, constantly adapting approach. For a soldier trained at West Point as an engineer, the idea that a problem has different solutions on different days was fundamentally, disturbing. Yet that was the case."

Trechos retirados de "Team of Teams: The Power of Small Groups in a Fragmented World" de Stanley McChrystal e Chris Fussell

Pode ser a vantagem das PME (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Não é novidade aqui no blogue mas assim, directo ao tema, nunca é demais:

"1. Product InnovationIn markets with an abundance of brands and less and less differentiating products, product development and sourcing capabilities move back into the strategic focus of fashion retailers. It’s the key enabler for differentiation in the competitive environment. Access to deep technical expertise and unique handwriting of product groups that are critical for brand building as well as curated supplier portfolios with the true ability to drive innovation, evolve to an indispensable asset to drive top line as well as markdown and margin performance.
.
2. Time to MarketIt is obvious that the speed of trends and innovation has tremendously increased over the recent years and consumers are adopting market impulses from option leaders, celebrities, and bloggers at high pace. This requires being closer to consumer needs with critical seasonal milestones on concept, design, and development for adoption of trend impulses as well as buying decisions to ensure market right products and quantities. Sourcing plays a critical role in enabling differentiated seasonal calendars based on individual product needs and a balanced mix of near shore and far east sourcing destinations.
.
3. Demand & Supply ResponsivenessA significant part of end-of-seasons stock and related markdowns stems from buying and production volumes being insufficiently aligned with actual consumer demand on the shop floor and online during full price selling period. Leading retailers and brands currently make significant investments to drive end-to-end planning integration along the value chain across retail, product merchandising, material management, and sourcing/production. Main objective is to act vertical while typically not owning the different stages of the value chain down to production.
.
4. Reliability and Execution ExcellenceWith shorter in-store product lifecycles, delivery reliability is more critical than ever before. A delivery delay of 1 or 2 weeks will strongly diminish sell-through performance if the overall planned lifecycle is only 8 weeks without any option to extend as following collection drops are already waiting to take the space on the shop floor. In this context, a reliable collaboration on both brand and supplier side will significantly increase importance and clearly dominate compared to short term FOB cost advantages."

Lados positivo, negativo e arriscado

Um lado positivo:

""Um dos nossos principais vetores de sucesso é o desenvolvimento de novos e inovadores produtos,
...
Apesar de a produção nacional estar ao nível dos melhores e a preços competitivos, Manuel Brasil refere que não podem competir só pelo preço ou pela qualidade. "Trabalhar exclusivamente pelo preço é demasiado perigoso e redutor, visto que as mais-valias são muito reduzidas, e porque continuarão a existir países cuja conjuntura local seja mais favorável a este tipo de fabrico", alerta. "A qualidade é algo que tem de ser inato a todos os produtos e serviços. A premissa que deve ser garantida é a de não cair em situações de "excesso" de qualidade, ou seja, tudo aquilo que esteja incluído num produto que não tenha valor para o cliente é de facto um custo para o fabricante.""[Moi ici: A aposta na diferenciação pela inovação]

Um lado negativo:

"Se não for criada e colocada no terreno uma estratégia nacional de formação na indústria de metalomecânica, não sei por quanto tempo este crescimento possa ser sustentado."[Moi ici: O ainda não ter percebido que vão ter de ser as empresas em associação a criar soluções locais e específicas para este problema. Se calhar em conjunto com uma escola privada mais virada para o ensino profissional oficinal, e que agora atravesse um mau momento com o fim dos contratos de associação]

Já agora, a propósito de "O têxtil vive em castelos de areia". Não é o têxtil, é toda a actividade económica privada. Afinal, não foi de ânimo leve que sublinhei: "For an entrepreneur, every day is a crisis". Todas as actividades económicas que dependem de clientes que são livres de escolher a quem comprar, são como os iogurtes, têm um modelo económico que, mais tarde ou mais cedo, e sem avisar, vai ficar obsoleto. Por isso, toda a actividade económica privada vive em castelos de areia, literalmente. E fugir disto é deturpar a economia.

Outro lado positivo:

"Como "não podemos competir pelo preço", o foco está em manter a flexibilidade que permite produzir séries pequenas em espaços de tempo apertados.[Moi ici: Ainda me lembro de quase só o anónimo da província ousar escrever sobre isto]
...
"O crescimento das vendas online dá vantagem a Portugal porque as marcas não podem ir à Ásia buscar mil peças em quatro meses, mas nós fazemo-lo. Cada vez mais, as lojas físicas vão encerrar e o comércio online pede rapidez." 

Um lado arriscado:

""Fizemos um estudo, que só será apresentado no primeiro semestre deste ano, que contabiliza o custo de armazenamento de toneladas de peças de vestuário que as marcas têm guardadas por essa Europa fora. Vamos resolver esse problema: propomos recuperar essas peças e dar-lhe uma vida nova, sem que percam valor."[Moi ici: O modelo que gerou/gera essas peças que não se vendem está a morrer. Por isso, também, é que o reshoring está a acontecer... recuar a Maio de 2006]

• Flexigurança, fiscalidade e competitividade (Janeiro 2007)
• Acerca da competitividade (Dezembro 2010)
• Hora da batota? (Março 2012)
• Como aproveitar a proximidade entre a produção e o consumo? (Julho 2012)
• Rapidez, rapidez, rapidez (Março 2013)
• Escrito nas estrelas (Abril 2013)
• E quem puder dar esse acompanhamento superior (parte III) (Novembro 2014) 
• Uma década à frente da tríade* (Junho de 2017)

Trechos retirados de "Exportações: três histórias de sucesso"

"short-lived consumer trends"

“If you’re selling the same merchandise that’s commonly available, and you’ve got no point of differentiation, you’re dead,” Mr. Rubin said. “It’s just a question of when you die.”

Comecei a perceber como materializar isto com um artigo na revista Business Week em 2005 sobre o fim das linhas de montagem da Canon. E com a leitura em 2006 do livro "How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make" onde encontrei trechos como este sobre a Kenwood:

"When Kenwood moved production of portable mini-disk players from a factory in Malaysia to their Yamagata, Japan, plant in 2003, they discovered they could exploit short-lived consumer trends."

Em 2017, esta abordagem continua a ser notícia, no país dos gringos:

"When Alejandro Villanueva, a Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman, stood for the anthem and the rest of the team stayed in the locker room, his name began trending on Twitter. Fanatics quickly posted a rendering of his No. 78 jersey on its website and on the N.F.L.’s online shop, which it also operates.
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Sales skyrocketed. Manufacturing facilities in Kentucky and Florida went to work pressing Mr. Villanueva’s name and number onto thousands of blank Pittsburgh jerseys for next-day shipping. Overnight, a player who had never caught a pass or scored a touchdown had the N.F.L.’s best-selling jersey.
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“That moment happened, people wanted to immediately buy that jersey,” Michael Rubin, the company’s chairman and principal owner said. “A week later, that moment is mostly over.”
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These micro-moments, as Mr. Rubin calls them, happen all the time in sports: A player reaches a milestone, has a breakout performance or is traded to a new team. Apparel companies have traditionally been poorly positioned to meet the accompanying fan demand as it surges. Fanatics is changing that and, in the process, carving out a lucrative niche in a fiercely competitive online-retail industry largely dominated by Amazon."

Trechos retirados de "Fanatics, Maker of Sports Apparel, Thrives by Seizing the Moment"

Diferenças

Diferentes clientes-alvo, diferentes propostas de valor, diferentes vantagens competitivas, diferentes preocupações e constrangimentos.

De um lado, "O empresário que paga acima da média e não quer horas extra". Antes de ler o artigo, só com o título, fiz uma aposta: Tens de ter marca própria e muito valorizada.

"“A beleza salvará o mundo”. Esta citação do escritor russo Fiódor Dostoiévski aparece na primeira página do site da Brunello Cucinelli, um empresário italiano. Embora menos conhecida do que impérios como a Prada e a Gucci, a Brunello Cucinelli é um ícone da alta moda, que fatura 450 milhões de euros e cresce 10% ao ano."

Bingo!

Do outro lado, "Luís Onofre, patrão do calçado: “O absentismo nos homens é quase zero e muito grande nas mulheres”". Cada vez mais o sector de calçado português tira partido da resposta rápida, da flexibilidade, à medida que os compradores encomendam cada vez mais tarde, cada vez em quantidades mais pequenas seguidas de reposições rápidas do que tiver mais sucesso.

BTW, isto vai ser cada vez mais frequente no futuro, "Líder da ANJE: “Há quem queira investir e fazer fábricas e não tem trabalhadores”".

Fast fashion: resposta rápida + design + clientes

"Firms in the fashion apparel industry—such as Zara, H&M, and Benetton—have increasingly embraced the philosophy of “fast fashion” retailing. Generally speaking, a fast fashion system combines at least two components:

1. short production and distribution lead times, enabling a close matching of supply with uncertain demand (which we refer to as quick response techniques);

1. highly fashionable (“trendy”) product design (which we refer to as enhanced design techniques).

Short lead times are enabled through a combination of localized production, sophisticated information systems that facilitate frequent inventory monitoring and replenishment, and expedited distribution methods.
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The second component (trendy product design) is made possible by carefully monitoring consumer and industry tastes for unexpected fads and reducing design lead times.
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the second component of fast fashion systems— creating trendy, highly fashionable products — received far less attention. ... some firms are attempting to focus on design and develop trendier products without reducing their production lead times because of the difficulties (both logistical and cultural) that can accompany drastically redesigning the supply network.
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We postulate that, all else being equal, enhanced design capabilities result in products that are of greater value to consumers and hence elicit a greater willingness to pay. Consequently, firms may exploit this greater willingness to pay by charging higher prices on “trendy” products than on more conservative products. [Moi ici: De onde virão os markups, perguntam os autores?] Enhanced design capabilities are costly, however: there are typically fixed costs (a large design staff, trend spotters, rapid prototyping capabilities, etc.), and there may be greater variable costs (e.g., because of more labor-intensive production processes or costly local labor). Thus, as with any operational strategy, firms considering enhanced design must trade off the benefits of the strategy (greater consumer willingness to pay) with the costs (fixed and variable).[Moi ici: A tríade assume que o motor é a redução de custos. Pois!]
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Quick response reduces the chance that inventory will remain to be sold at the clearance price. Enhanced product design, on the other hand, gives customers a trendier product that they value more, making them less willing to risk waiting for a sale if there is any chance that the item will stock out.
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Thus, whereas quick response decreases the expected future utility of waiting for a price reduction, enhanced design increases the immediate utility of buying the product at the full price. By decreasing consumer incentives to wait for the clearance sale, both enhanced design and quick response allow the firm to set a higher selling price while still inducing consumers to pay the full price.
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We develop a model of such a system and compare its performance to three alternative systems: quick-response-only systems, enhanced-design-only systems, and traditional systems (which lack both enhanced design and quick response capabilities). In particular, we focus on the impact of each of the four systems on “strategic” or forward-looking consumer purchasing behavior, i.e., the intentional delay in purchasing an item at the full price to obtain it during an end-of-season clearance. We find that enhanced design helps to mitigate strategic behavior by offering consumers a product they value more, making them less willing to risk waiting for a clearance sale and possibly experiencing a stockout. Quick response mitigates strategic behavior through a different mechanism: by better matching supply to demand, it reduces the chance of a clearance sale. Most importantly, we find that although it is possible for quick response and enhanced design to be either complements or substitutes, the complementarity effect tends to dominate. Hence, when both quick response and enhanced design are combined in a fast fashion system, the firm typically enjoys a greater incremental increase in profit than the sum of the increases resulting from employing either system in isolation. Furthermore, complementarity is strongest when customers are very strategic. We conclude that fast fashion systems can be of significant value, particularly when consumers exhibit strategic behavior."

Trechos retirados de "The Value of Fast Fashion: Quick Response, Enhanced Design, and Strategic Consumer Behavior", de Gérard P. Cachon e Robert Swinney, publicado por Management Science, Vol. 57, No. 4, April 2011, pp. 778–795

O anónimo da província estava certo!

Mais um texto em linha com o que aqui defendemos há anos com base na nossa experiência empírica.  Enquanto os membros da tríade (académicos fechados nas suas torres de marfim, comentadores económicos e políticos) continuam a falar de competitividade com base no século XX e, por isso, estão prisioneiros do eficientismo e das manigâncias com a cotação da moeda, há um outro mundo:

"The manufacturing arm of operations management (OM) has limited itself to a narrow vision of what this key organizational function is supposed to be and do. OM scholars have quibbled about efficiency in factory and supply-chain operations, while giving little attention to tying production forward to end customers. Our view is that this single-minded focus on efficiency has effectively knocked OM research, theory, topics, methods, measures, and practitioner guidance off kilter.
On the industry side, a narrow view of OM mirrors the single- minded focus that we observe in academia. Manufacturers proudly display factories that have been cleared of targeted wastes and are marvels of short flow times, low work-in-process in- ventories, and high capacity utilization. They may also point to similar achievements with key suppliers. A closer look, however, often reveals a supply chain with extended lead times [Moi ici: Aposto que, como eu, não sabia que o Toyota Production System, essa maravilha de organização e eficiência (sem ironia) congela a previsão de produção com 8 semanas de antecedência] and swollen finished-goods inventories that dwarf the low in-plant inventories. The overall supply chain often loses the ability to compete on anything except cost. The resulting vulnerability to low-cost competition leads to offshoring.
Inability to synchronize with downstream demand increases production cost through supply-demand mismatches, delays in addressing quality issues - even mass product recalls, and customer defections. These negative outcomes are commonplace even in factories held up as bastions of “best practices”.
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A major deterrent to CP [Moi ici: Concurrent production] adoption is the tendency both in companies and among the OM academic community to focus on localized efficiency to the neglect of responsiveness in fulfilling customer needs. Manufacturing people have limited interaction with final users, so the cost of valuing efficiency above responsiveness goes unnoticed. In consequence, manufacturing-improvement efforts tend to be limited to pursuit of within-factory efficiencies: short internal flows, smoothed sched- ules, and high capacity utilization.
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manufacturers in their quest for operational efficiency prefer factory operatives to be always busy making products. CP, on the other hand, welcomes the situation in which both equipment and its operators are idle for lack of current demand.
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Another managerial mindset that hinders CP implementation is the assumption that it is better to reduce changeover times on a single piece of equipment than to duplicate that equipment. Along similar lines, we have seen manufacturers replacing multiple units with a single large, flexible piece of equipment. ... done for the sake of “... improved efficiency and productivity”. This way of thinking culminates in “monument” machines: high-speed, multi-functional equipment that gives the impression of being extremely efficient. ... that engineers “... typically think at the process level,” seeking efficiencies “... by combining operations with[in] a single piece of equipment.” This “can cause a disconnect with general management who want to increase sales, make gains in market share, or find new sources of revenue by adding product lines.”"

Agora metam neste cenário os fanáticos da automatização que só pensam no eficientismo e se esquecem de Mongo: rapidez, flexibilidade e variedade crescente para servir tribos cada vez mais exigentes.

Continua.

Trechos retirados de "Missing link in competitive manufacturing research and practice: Customer-responsive concurrent production" publicado por Journal of Operations Management 49-51 (2017) 83-87