People Supply Chain: The new paradigm fro thinking from Wharton

Filed in archive Products on February 26, 2008

Peter Cappelli, the professor from Wharton School of Business has created a new paradigm for thinking about Human capital which is called "Talent Supply Chain Management".

He believes we can think about Human Resource Management as a supply chain. Supply chain managers "ask questions like, 'Do we have the right parts in stock?' 'Do we know where to get these parts when we need them?' and 'Does it cost a lot of money to carry inventory?'

What if we think, as an employer who is worried about issues like HRM, about personnel from the perspective of money and costs, and what happens if you don't have the right people in place to do the necessary jobs.

Other operations research practices that Cappelli mentions in his Knowledge@Wharton include shortening the forecasting cycle, reorganizing the delivery of development programs to improve responsiveness, and working out "queueing problems." Queueing problems occur in situations where, for example, employees are waiting for rotational assignments but can't get them because the incumbents have no vacancies to move into - the result of a business downturn, change in assignment length or a product redesign, for example. "The analogy in manufacturing is an 'unbalanced [assembly] line,' in which inventory builds up behind the slower-moving station, or in this case, the assignment that takes longer to complete."

It's a pretty cool way of thinking, Isn't it? Do you see any problem with this analogy?