The purpose of this paper is to report on experiences from BAT’s major supply chain reconfiguration program; it details practices, lessons learnt and do’s and do nots. There is little research that reports on how to manage major supply chain reconfiguration programs, despite the fact that it is widely acknowledged that this can be challenging.
Many supply chain reconfiguration programs are launched each year. Despite a wealth of knowledge existing in the general management domain, there has been little work within the supply chain management domain on change. That which does exist deals with change to a technical – as opposed to non-technical – system. This leaves out many of the social and behavioral aspects of change. This pape…