LMA Consulting & Long-Term Success

As we celebrate 20 years in business as of May 2025, we wanted to discuss the importance of long-term thinking and, of course, recognize our clients and colleagues. We have noticed that clients that think long-term are far more successful than those that respond to events as they occur. Not wanting to be the cobbler with children who have no shoes, we do our best to incorporate best practices as we go. In fact, one of our favorite things about consulting is that we are always learning, incorporating improvements, and applying the concepts to different situations.

Before we talk more about long-term thinking, we’d be completely remiss if we didn’t THANK our clients and colleagues as we wouldn’t be celebrating 20 years without your active engagement. A special thank you to the extended LMA team/ partners, ASCM-IE Board of Directors and students, ProVisors executive committee, key former PaperPak colleagues, family and friends. Here’s to the next 20!

The Advantage of Long-Term Thinking Over Short-Term

Although long-term thinking has generally been considered better than short-term thinking, businesses are often in a conundrum as they have to report quarterly results. In the end, they jump through hoops to pull in orders, change production schedules, and cut off supplier orders to manage quarterly results. Yet it is frequently at the detriment of long-term results.

Monthly or Quarterly Focus vs. Long-Term

For example, at an aerospace manufacturer, we had a unique opportunity to break free of the month-end hockey stick cycle as a new General Manager came onboard. We had a challenging time in convincing the teams to do what is best for the customer and operational effectiveness without worrying about being held accountable for month-end results. We explained that the volume would pick up the next month and so the overall results would remain the same over a longer period of time. And, it could improve service levels if we didn’t jump through hoops for monthly dollars, potentially using materials and labor required for other orders due at the beginning of the next month. When it rolled out, productivity and profitability increased as we level loaded the schedule and customer service remained intact and improved.

SIOP: Long-Term Demand & Supply

As supply chains evolve due to changing business conditions, geopolitical risk, and the increase in importance of natural resources, reviewing short-term actions will not be sufficient. Companies will have to develop long-term demand plans and sales forecasts that align with changing business conditions, and plan out several months or years, depending on the industry and situation. For example, if your current manufacturing facilities are insufficient due to geopolitical risks or tariffs, you will need to plan operational capacity, source additional suppliers, pursue offload / fill-in suppliers, address equipment needs, update logistics systems, etc. If your you are dependent on a critical supplier that is at risk, you will need to rapidly diversify your sources of supply and find additional solutions. Or if you are well-positioned in an industry with competitors dependent on risky sources of supply, you must prepare to scale.

You SIOP (Sales Inventory Operations Planning) process will be an important vehicle to rapidly and continually assess and align your long-term demand and supply plans. For example, an industrial manufacturer utilized their SIOP process to review market opportunities, assess pricing and cost strategies, determine which facilities to scale up, which facilities to ramp down, when to allocate capital to the purchase of machinery and equipment, what volume to secure of critical sources of supply as world events occurred/ risks emerged (such as the Ukraine war), and which types of resources (engineering, key work cells) will be required down-the-line, etc. Each of these items will relate back to long-term financing and working capital needs. In addition, there should be long-term R&D and new product development plans that integrate into the SIOP process. To learn more about how to roll out SIOP, refer to our complimentary eBook, SIOP: Creating Predictable Revenue & EBITDA Growth.

Short-Term Silo View vs Long-Term Cross-Functional View

Another example of long-term thinking is to consider long-term impacts of decisions affecting the full organization rather than reviewing short-term impacts to your silo. Unfortunately, this situation arises frequently yet is difficult to resolve unless you can talk through long-term, cross-functional benefits and costs. To achieve this, you typically must also align goals, objectives, and performance management systems so that leaders are focused on the best long-term strategy instead of what is best for individual departments or leaders.

What’s Coming Down the Pike

Looking at what is coming down-the-pike is also vital. In the current business environment, long-term plans could evolve frequently. There is no point putting together detailed plans for non-essential items. More importantly, the key to success is to be forward-thinking and look for big changes to the business environment and incorporate core concepts and/or issues into your strategies and plans. Put together a management process that allows you to incorporate changing conditions and opportunities with a reasonable cadence.

What’s Coming Down the Pike: Manufacturing, Supply Chain & Technology

We should always be thinking about what’s coming down the pike & down-the-line impacts. We will talk about a few key ones that pop to mind.

1. Importance of AI: AI will fuel the world’s future growth, and it will be a race to excellence to dominate the field. Of course, it could be used for good or evil, thus making the race all that more important. There are massive AI related investments in the U.S. by companies such as Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, Meta, Google, OpenAI, ServiceNow, Cisco, Saudi Arabia, etc. Companies are starting to use AI to help their employees be more efficient and effective and will continue to level up and with predictive and agentic capabilities.
2. Critical necessity of natural resources: AI will drive a huge need for energy (continuous improvement will not be nearly enough) and rare earths/ critical minerals. Although the U.S. has vast potential to increase energy, it must scale up far faster than planned to not be left in the dust vs. China. China has permitted a coal plant a week for several years and put plans in place to get to 9 terawatts vs the U.S.’s plans to get to 2 terawatts. China dominates rare earths production (60% of the world’s needs) and processing (85% of the world’s needs) and recently halted exports.
3. Made in the USA: We see vast potential for companies building capabilities to scale up to mitigate serious risks and better support future customer needs profitably and with engaged employees and supply chain partners. We see huge opportunities for companies focused on innovating, developing products for future customer needs, redesigning products to be produced in smart factories, upskilling their teams, building resiliency and agility into processes, leveling up capabilities and capacities, and securing supply of critical resources.
4. Regional supply chains: Friendly, regional supply chains will be the wave of the future to ensure supply and support growth. USMCA countries and Latin America will thrive, similarly to Eastern Europe and key global partners such as Japan and India. The best and bright will
5. Predictive processes: Extending the conversation about AI, utilizing advanced processes such as demand planning, advanced planning, SIOP, and predictive analytics will be vital to stay ahead of changing conditions and develop strategies for the future.
6. Innovation & advanced technologies: In addition to AI, the best of the best will encourage innovation and pursue advanced technologies. Instead of following fads, they will determine what is most meaningful to their industry, company, process, and/or product and boldly invest, trial and remain focused on what will drive exponential value.

Of course, none of the critical priorities will succeed without talent. Start there, and think about talent for the future, not the past.

LMA is focused on each of these critical items. We will be launching a proprietary supply chain AI engine to get base answers and advice in the next few months. If you are interested in being part of the trial member, contact us. We also also developing an internal AI database to enhance and speed up our results. Our thought leadership is focused on researching, communicating and educating clients and colleagues.

Our passion is in supporting manufacturers and supporting organizations on future-proofing their end-to-end supply chains. We specialize in predictive processes, advanced technologies, and helping our clients to drive powerful bottom-line results. We also enjoy seeing the growth in individual contributors at our clients – they give us optimism for the future!

We are excited about what is on the horizon and look forward to the next 20 years in our journey.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic:
Supply Chain Transformation & SIOP Case Study for Success