Blog Archives
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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... -
Logistics and the Tide of War
By Barry Hochfelder - Wednesday February 6, 2013As someone who covers the supply chain and an armchair historian, I’m naturally intrigued by wartime logistics. It was Napoleon who said, “Armies march on their stomachs.” In the Oxford Companion to World War II, Charles Messenger wrote, “Before the coming of the railway and invention of the internal combustion engine, armies subsisted largely by foraging, both for food and fuel, the latter, of course, being horse feed.” Things have changed. On my seemingly endless list of books to read is a new one that delves deeply into military logistics: Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War by Paul Kennedy (Random House). A review in the History Book Club says, “Perhaps above all... -
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... -
What Do You Get Out of Your Supply Chain Organization Membership?
By Natalia Kosk - Friday January 11, 2013New Year. New topics. For some, even new beginnings. Whether 2013 sparked a need for change within your personal relationships or business aspects, now’s the time to identify what your goals are for the year ahead and execute them. For some in the supply chain, this could mean re-evaluating your memberships to the professional organizations and associations in your industry. Have you been a member of a group for years but just aren’t seeing the ROI you were hoping for anymore? Perhaps you’re looking to join a group to build your network base? The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), the Supply Chain Council (SCC), The Association for Operations Management... -
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... -
Orchestrating Convergence in Retail for Compelling Value Propositions
- Thursday December 13, 2012
The decentralized nature of outsourced platform innovation demands orchestrators to manage end-to-end value chain entropy. As such, outsourcing convergent platform innovation requires the presence of five elements of success. The ability to see past the day-to-day demands of markets and operations toward a vision of the future; and the development of agile cultural and internal decision making processes are two elements of success. Best-in-class orchestrators systematically execute against a set of guiding principles to check value chain entropy as highlighted in Figure 6. Some of those guiding principles include: Common Technology Consolidation—Whenever possible, find multiple uses for standardized technologies, across as many... -
The Holiday Season Is Upon Us!
By Guy Courtin - Thursday November 29, 2012
It’s that time of year again. ‘Sell, sell, sell!’ is the motto of every retailer during the holiday season, while ‘buy, buy, buy!’ rings through the minds of most consumers—especially once it’s time for them to benefit from Black Friday and Cyber Monday discount prices. And every year, it feels like the holiday shopping season starts earlier than the last. At a CVS store with my son in late August, we saw the workers switching out the aisle displays from summer time products to Halloween. ‘Really?’ I questioned. ‘What’s next? Easter decorations in December?’ Granted, I also saw Christmas ornaments, lawn Santa Clauses, wrapping paper and other related items being sold at Costco that same month. I really... -
Using Game Theory to Gain “Win-Win” Outsourcing Ventures
By Kate Vitasek - Thursday November 22, 2012
There’s a long line of economists and academics stretching past Adam Smith’s time that helps us understand the emergence and necessity of modern outsourcing. One of the most prominent in that line is the Nobel laureate John Nash. If you are familiar with the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” which is loosely based on the life of Nash, there’s a brief scene in it that captures his great breakthrough in the use of games—especially non-cooperative games—as a basis for understanding complicated economic issues. In the scene, Nash (portrayed by Russell Crowe) has a light-bulb moment in a campus bar as he and his mates mull over the best ways to produce optimum results in their approach and pursuit of a beautiful blonde and her friends...
