Apparently, businesses are way more advanced than Mother Nature. They seem to have found the secret of eternal life. How else do you explain your long tail of old stock keeping units (SKUs) that have gone way past their ‘remove by’ date?

Supply chain conversations always involve some kind of event or challenge relating to new product introductions and launches. Whatever happened to product lifecycle management (PLM)? Its story has a sad ending (sorry kids): the product is properly killed!

Sure, every now and again, businesses run SKU reduction projects. These are the equivalent of a flu pandemic for products, wiping out a big chunk of them. But these projects are not regular and they do not always live up to their expectations.

PLM is not a project. It should be as much a part of doing business as switching off the lights when you are last to leave the office. Every product should be managed to the end of its lifecycle.

And when the time comes, you must have a plan to put it out of its misery and not let it haunt the business, generating more costs than profit.

You can’t opt out from the last stage in the circle of life. It just does not work like that. So, as with death in the natural world, PLM should be compulsory, not optional.

Hugh Williams is founder of supply chain planning specialist consultancy Hughenden.