“Think foremost to be undaunted”

Within a company famous for innovation, Cheryl Capps, Corning Incorporated’s SVP and Chief Supply Chain Officer, is the newest member of the company’s Senior Leadership Team as well as a forward thinker and visionary. She is propelling the company's supply chain organization into the future by sharing her vision and motivating people to think about what’s possible.

Since joining Corning 11 years ago, Capps has invested equally in people, processes, and technology. She has made it a priority to work with new and emerging technology firms that have big ideas. These smaller companies are pushing the boundaries and have the flexibility to successfully partner with Corning. “Corning Global Supply Management (GSM) has made it a priority to grow its spending with diverse suppliers, including small businesses run by women and minorities,” she said.

In terms of processes, Capps has adopted a next generation digitalization model that includes the elements of end-to-end visibility, integrated planning tools, early warning systems, comprehensive data platforms, advanced analytics and next generation tools, such as 3-D printing and robotic process automation, and smart supply chain enablers like blockchain.

“Recently, our focus has been on supply chain visibility and risk management. The tools we implemented with emerging technology companies include an enterprise-wide platform that provides visibility to more than 50 external risk factors. The tool uses these external risk factors and internal impact scores to prioritize risks and to alert us about events and trends where action is required. Another tool is our enterprise-wide collaboration platform. This is where we create incidents, add followers, and solve supply chain problems, both real-time and proactively. And finally, we use another digitalization tool for data aggregation and reporting. Together, these tools are the foundation of a best-in-class enterprise risk management solution,” said Capps.

Created before the global pandemic, GSM’s enterprise risk management solutions were built on the pillars of this digitalization model. “These methods and tools have enabled Corning to continue serving its customers with minimal disruption,” said Capps. With agile processes in place in the midst of the pandemic, Corning tested its new enterprise at every plant and with every supplier, customer, freight path, geography, and product line -- and the framework worked as planned.

“We did not disrupt our customer orders and were able to support employee and community needs (e.g., PPE). Within hours of a lockdown announcement, we had the list of suppliers who were impacted, prioritized them by risk, and we were reaching out to help them obtain essential business qualification to stay open and service our needs, often before they even realized that they were in jeopardy,” said Capps.

In response, Corning was recognized in 2020 by the National Association for Manufacturing for supply chain excellence.

Today, the world is focused on the current supply chain climate – supply disruptions and inflation. In an effort to be more proactive, Capps and her team are developing a Supply Chain Disruption Shaping Project, which aims to reduce the frequency and impact of supply chain disruptions. “We need to figure out how to shape disruptions to reduce the quantity and impact of each. Our reliance on single source suppliers will decrease, and we will reduce the surface area of our supply chain by moving suppliers and inventory closer to our operations. Supply assurance will also improve overall customer service,” said Capps.

Following the same formula for success that Corning used for risk management, the company is deploying digital tools and capabilities in new combinations to tackle the area of social responsibility. With the rapid acceleration of legislative and advocacy activity and a commensurate increase in demands from customers, it became clear that Corning could not address each expectation in isolation.

Corning has launched a comprehensive program across the end-to-end supply chain to address prevention, detection, mitigation and communication. Corning’s commitment to socially responsible mining is seen as a leading practice across the industry. They plan to have 100% of their high-risk suppliers and contract manufacturers certified as socially responsible by 2025.

Since 1971 when Corning’s invention of emissions-control substrates started a new era that continues to make air cleaner and healthier, Corning has been committed to sustainable processes. In support of this, Corning accelerated its climate actions in 2021 by introducing carbon reduction goals which includes reducing its Scope 3 supply chain emissions by 17.5% by 2028. While these efforts are just beginning, Capps and Corning expect the successes to continue.