Comments on: Putting in Place a Labor-Based Supply Chain http://www.ere.net/2005/11/02/putting-in-place-a-labor-based-supply-chain/ Recruiting intelligence. Recruiting community. Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:46:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Joel Londenberg http://www.ere.net/2005/11/02/putting-in-place-a-labor-based-supply-chain/#comment-4250 Joel Londenberg Wed, 02 Nov 2005 02:38:00 +0000 http://www.ere.net/2005/11/02/putting-in-place-a-labor-based-supply-chain/#comment-4250 I was a former intern at Valero two summers ago. We built and implemented what is considered the first labor supply chain model in the industry. Dan Hilbert was the visionary who designed this system believing, when no one else did, that Valero would see huge efficiency and quality gains. Even internally, he did not receive any support initially. Ultimately, he was right. I'm happy for Dan that his vision is now being validated by industry experts like Dr. Sullivan and Mr. Wheeler. Much of what is being in written about labor supply chains is really hype and fluff. We played with creating a 'common taxonomy'. In reality, no one could ever gain consensus on what was actually a skill, competency or ability. Even more, how could these be measured. The best psychologists in the space still fight over the difference in KSAs. What does work is when this is implemented to optimize global labor supply pools from the four various labor types to create virtually led, project based, labor teams. We developed a full technology system of labor characteristics, labor types, base level skills, push and pull technology for order processing, vendor management, vendor bidding systems and system-wide metric monitoring. Essentially, I believe what Dan actually built was the next generation ATS. To get more than an academic idea of what a fully implemented labor supply chain looks like in production, I believe Dan published an article a few months back about the industry's only mature and fully functional Labor Supply Chain in the ERE Journal. If you pick-up a sense of pride, it's because we pioneered an entirely new market and we are very proud of it. Yet the Labor supply chain is just the basis for truly advanced workforce systems. When the labor supply chain is driven by the predictive labor needs modeling system Dan and David Trevino designed, totally new dimensions in business capability have been introduced through next-generation workforce planning. I was a former intern at Valero two summers ago. We built and implemented what is considered the first labor supply chain model in the industry. Dan Hilbert was the visionary who designed this system believing, when no one else did, that Valero would see huge efficiency and quality gains. Even internally, he did not receive any support initially. Ultimately, he was right.

I’m happy for Dan that his vision is now being validated by industry experts like Dr. Sullivan and Mr. Wheeler.

Much of what is being in written about labor supply chains is really hype and fluff. We played with creating a ‘common taxonomy’. In reality, no one could ever gain consensus on what was actually a skill, competency or ability. Even more, how could these be measured. The best psychologists in the space still fight over the difference in KSAs.

What does work is when this is implemented to optimize global labor supply pools from the four various labor types to create virtually led, project based, labor teams. We developed a full technology system of labor characteristics, labor types, base level skills, push and pull technology for order processing, vendor management, vendor bidding systems and system-wide metric monitoring. Essentially, I believe what Dan actually built was the next generation ATS.

To get more than an academic idea of what a fully implemented labor supply chain looks like in production, I believe Dan published an article a few months back about the industry’s only mature and fully functional Labor Supply Chain in the ERE Journal. If you pick-up a sense of pride, it’s because we pioneered an entirely new market and we are very proud of it. Yet the Labor supply chain is just the basis for truly advanced workforce systems. When the labor supply chain is driven by the predictive labor needs modeling system Dan and David Trevino designed, totally new dimensions in business capability have been introduced through next-generation workforce planning.

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