Industry experts and thought leaders will discuss all aspects of the supply chain that could affect your business, including retail trends, government issues, technology developments, regulations and standards, the effects of natural disasters on your business, risk management, chemical/industrial business and much more.
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Industry Structures Are Evolving but Can Procurement Do the Same?
By Santosh Nair - Monday May 13, 2013
“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” Wayne Gretzky’s infamous line has never been more applicable to procurement than in today’s environment. An environment when many supplier and buyer industries continue to undergo fundamental structural changes—such as with new global competitors, innovative distribution channels, disruptive technology and rapidly changing customer needs. The first quarter of 2013 provided a good backdrop to several of these changes. Q1 could well serve as an inflection point for the overall U.S. economy and many key industries. The housing rebound is on; business earnings remain strong; stock markets reached all-time highs; consumer confidence continues to grow; and Chairman... -
Predictive Analytics—The Five Things You Need to Know
By Yan Krupnik - Friday February 8, 20131). The Future of Predictive Analytics Is Here Now Over the past 10 years, advanced analytics grew exponentially to become one of the hottest topics in business technology. A look at Google Trends reveals an over 300 percent spike in searches for predictive analytics since 2010. Moreover, according to global business technology research group IDC Manufacturing, the advanced business analytics market grew to a $31.7 billion market. Predictive analytics is big and it deserves your attention. 2). Go Full Circle with All That Data You’ve Collected Businesses collect more data than ever before and from every aspect of the supply and demand chain—logistics; vendor compliancy/lead times; POS data; inventory levels; prices... -
Transportation Mobilization: Streamlining Workforce Efficiency and Delivery, One Baked Good at a Time
By Mike McGuriman - Monday January 28, 2013Deploying mobile handhelds within the supply chain can create multiple benefits, including cutting costs and saving staff hours. The transportation and delivery segments of the supply chain can especially benefit from mobilization by increasing efficiency and accuracy. For example, one of the largest independent bakeries in western Canada recently deployed mobile rugged hand-held devices for its route drivers in Calgary. The bakery is an early adopter of technology that first incorporated hand-held computers into their delivery system in 1990. By 2009, the bakery’s second generation of hand-held computers became obsolete. The mobile devices—mainly used by the bakery’s truck drivers—were prone to breaking; hard to read; and... -
Manufacturer Delivers BI to the Supply Chain
By Fred Hartung - Thursday January 10, 2013There are a number of different functional areas that can be readily improved through the use of business intelligence (BI) tools. From logistics and distribution to sourcing, materials management, advanced planning, supplier performance and risk management—all of these serve as top targets for the use of BI tools in manufacturing. And there are also a number of steps that the manufacturing segment of supply chain can take to develop custom BI tools. They can identify preliminary objectives to achieve; classify the data required for analysis; determine where the data exists and collect it; structure the database so it can be readily expanded with additional data fields; and build algorithms to automate the analytical process. In the... -
“Taxation” without Representation—We’re Putting the Topic of Increasing Carrier Rates on the Table
By Brandon Staton - Friday December 21, 2012Benjamin Franklin once said “The only things certain in life are death and taxes.” It’s safe to say that Ben didn’t ship small parcels. If he did, surely he would have added FedEx and UPS annual rate increases to his short list of life’s inevitable occurrences. As is customary, both major parcel carriers will increase the price for their services as we enter a new calendar year. How much those prices will rise, however, is far less certain and heavily dependent upon a parcel shipper’s unique package characteristics. Each carrier announced an average increase of 4.9 percent on ground services, derived from a 5.9 percent base increase, minus a one percent point reduction in fuel surcharge. UPS air services will spike a net...
