No one likes change. In fact, it’s human nature to resist it and to try to keep things as routine as possible. It may sound good in theory, but it rarely works that way in the supply chain environment, where change is the name of the game.

So rather than resist it, why not embrace uncertainty and turn it into a competitive advantage? That’s what M. Eric Johnson, Director of the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, asked in this i2 Technologies-sponsored keynote session, which opened the Supply Chain Management Review track of the 2006 Global Supply Chain Conference.

Johnson presented his vision of the future and discussed what companies—and the supply chain professionals in those companies—need to do to get ready for that future. Having completed extensive research into what the digitally-enabled supply chain of the future will look like, Johnson has also backed up his assertions with in-person roundtables conducted at the Center with business leaders from Fortune 500 companies.

“Look around and see how much uncertainty and change we’re faced with,” Johnson said. “Around the world we see natural disasters, security concerns, and changing business markets. When we think about these uncertainties, we see that supply chains are in the middle of all of that. In fact, when you think about it, we live and manage every day in an uncertain world.”

And while many look at uncertainty as being a bad thing, Johnson urged supply chain managers to see the glass as “half full” by embracing that change and turning it into a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

He broke down that strategy into different levels: reducing or eliminating uncertainty; embracing the change and planning for rapid migration; and exploiting that change to a company’s best advantage.

Johnson sees concepts like CPFR (collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment), VMI (vendor-managed inventory), mass customization, postponement, and collaboration with suppliers to create hedging strategies, as a few of the tools that supply chain managers can use to master uncertainty and change in today’s world.

“It’s about unleashing new value from supply chains by embracing uncertainty, and then using that information to build a winning business strategy,” he said.