Original Source: NC State University
“A cross-functional team (XFT) is generally created by a business unit Executive Vice President – who assigns professionals to participate. A XFT is formed in response to a very specific business need, and is chartered to deliver very specific business outcomes that they held are accountable for delivering, as well as for ongoing management of the integrated process. In most cases, a XFT that includes supply management is composed of several other functional representatives who represent their function. Many SCM groups are still not comfortable with this situation – as it creates a fundamental tension. Why? Because a functional representative may in some cases be asked to sub-optimize their functional outcomes to optimize the overall business objectives. (For example, a team may not get the best price from a supplier, but will choose a supplier that provides the best delivery reliability). The challenge of the team is to ensure that all functional requirements are addressed, but that consensus is reached on maximizing the overall desired business objective.
There are several roles at the SCM functional level that oversee all of the XFT’s.
A XFT member refers to a SCM professional who sits on the team and works with the team members towards achieving the stated business objective. These individuals are not in a position to aggregate for other XFT’s – so need to work with them on constraints…”
Contributors: Open Source
Categories: SIG U Resource, Tool
SRC Type: Sourcing, Strategy