APICS to update industry recognized SCOR model in its 20th year

APICS, a professional association for supply chain management, has announced plans for a new version of The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model.

SCOR is a leading supply chain framework, linking business processes, performance metrics, practices, and people skills into a unified structure. The newest version of SCOR, which is the framework’s 12th iteration, is currently under development by a committee of international supply chain practitioner experts and will include updates to maturity models, best practices, and terminology.

“The new version of SCOR is incorporating many emerging drivers of supply chain success such as big data, omni-channel, and automation to keep SCOR at the forefront of supply chain,” said APICS CEO Abe Eshkenazi, CSCP, CPA, CAE. “SCOR has been the leader in addressing, improving, and communicating supply chain business performance for the last twenty years, and it’s our intent to maintain SCOR’s position as the cross-industry, global standard.”

The recommendations made by the committee of supply chain experts were validated by a SCOR job task analysis survey that was completed by more than 1,600 supply chain professionals. This survey confirmed that both the committee and supply chain professionals see an increasing importance in:

● Sourcing and procurement processes for the SCOR framework
● Metadata, digitization, omni-channel, and supply chain maturity model
● Data analytics, data acquisition, data science, and predictive analysis as staff skills related to organizational supply chain initiatives
● Continuing education and improvement of supply chain manager skills and abilities

The coming version of SCOR will further define how SCOR interacts with other frameworks, including the Management for Supply Chain (M4SC) framework. This year’s updates are heavily influenced by industry trends in Advanced Analytics, Semantic Supply Chain, and Integrated Business Planning (IBP), particularly on IBP in the context of Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). APICS members and SCOR users can expect to see updated maturity models and practices associated with these new focus areas, and the addition of digital strategy terminology and practices throughout the updated framework.

In addition to new terms, definitions, and practices, APICS’s Special Focus Forums are examining opportunities to make SCOR a machine-readable language that can be leveraged for cloud-based advanced analytics. This type of advancement would provide more insight on process performance drivers and predictors, early detection of adverse performance trends and corrective action to avoid negative outcomes, and identify recommended decisions and actions to maximize performance.

In preparation for the SCOR 12.0 launch, APICS introduced an APICS for Business platform that supports corporations in their journey toward supply chain excellence. New products in 2017 include: SCORmark manufacturing and distribution benchmark reports, a competitive alignment report, integration of APICS certification with the people aspect of the SCOR framework, updates to the SCOR Implementation Roadmap and a SCOR Business Process Management Accelerator powered by Software AG’s API Management Solutions. SCOR 12.0 is expected to launch in conjunction with the framework’s 20th anniversary later this year.

These SCOR updates are currently under development and the new version will be released later this year. Visit the APICS for Business website to learn more about SCOR.