Marisa Brown

Apqc Marisa Brown

Marisa Brown is senior principal research lead for supply chain management for APQC.

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Extend Visibility Beyond Tier 1 Suppliers

Thanks to advances in technology, gaining information on supplier performance and potential disruptions is no longer such a time-intensive task.

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Weighing the Impact of Supply Chain Disruptions

Supply chain pros can see through the clickbait and understand the deeper reasons for supply chain disruptions, but what about consumers?

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Top 6 Obstacles to Improving Supply Chain Processes In 2022

APQC’s 2022 Supply Chain Priorities and Challenges research with supply chain professionals found that many of the biggest barriers to process improvement in supply chain come from a lack of these skills.

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Benchmarking the Actual vs. Maximum Production Rate

APQC has found that 29 percent of organizations have already significantly invested in manufacturing systems that can configure and monitor on their own, giving those organizations an improved ability to maximize their actual production rate.

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6 Skills for AI-Ready Supply Chain Professionals

Here are six new skills that supply chain employees need to develop or enhance as the result of AI adoption.

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Continuous Global Risk Monitoring for Supply Chain Disruptions

Organizations that lack these systems completely will only be able to react to disruptions once they have occurred, and even those with systems that provide basic monitoring (but no information on impact) may lose valuable response time.

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3 Practices for Better Category Management

Mature category management can lead to improved negotiation capabilities because it provides greater visibility into spend across suppliers.

Note: The total does not equal 100% due to rounding. The percentages represent median values.

Supplier Management Needs More Time and Attention

In the face of disruption—whether from a global pandemic, raw materials shortages, congested ports or something else—your supplier’s success or failure can determine your own.

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Leverage Package Tracking to Improve Logistics Performance

The most common package tracking method is currently RFID, followed by IoT sensors; few organizations are currently using blockchain for package tracking.

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Think Holistically for More Cost-Effective Warehousing

To lower costs in a sustainable and impactful way, you’ll want to develop a multi-pronged solution that addresses people, process, technology and the physical environment of the warehouse.

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Workplace Mentoring is a Proven Practice in Supply Chain

Mentors can help send a powerful message to supply chain employees that whatever challenges they are facing, others have gone before them and have come out the other side successfully.

According to APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking data in supply chain planning, less than half of organizations support an omnichannel commerce strategy to a significant or very great extent.

Develop Supply Chain Maturity to Support Omnichannel Commerce Strategies

As organizations focus on supply chain responsiveness, omnichannel support is a key strategic concern.

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How to Improve First-Pass Quality Yield in Manufacturing

Achieving top-tier performance for finished-product first-pass quality yield for primary products takes careful planning, good supplier relationship management, well-documented processes and investments in the right technology.

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Robotic Process Automation for Procurement

RPA technology improves procurement efficiency for the organizations that invest in optimizing it.

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A Focus on Perfect Condition Rate Helps Drive Quality

There are plenty of steps a company can take to bring its perfect condition rate up, including collaborative work with suppliers, standardized packaging processes at warehouses and automation to reduce the opportunity for human error and track orders.

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Consider Environmental Factors in Sourcing Decisions

To survive and thrive, leading companies are thinking more broadly by considering strategic factors in sourcing decisions and continuing to invest in deeper supplier relationships.

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Metric of the Month: Reducing Warranty Costs as a Percentage of Sales

Through analyzing its Open Standards Benchmarking database, APQC found that bottom performers are at a massive disadvantage on this measure, with warranty costs five times higher than top performers.

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Metric of the Month: Spend Your Time Wisely in Sourcing to Build a Strong Supply Chain

COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of suppliers to the success of the entire supply chain.

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Unfulfilled Sales Line Order Items: Causes and Solutions

Are you able to fulfill your customers’ orders with what they want when they want it? What will the impact to your company be if you cannot?

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Touchless Order Performance

When a customer places an order with your company, how many hands touch that order as it moves through the order-to-cash value chain?

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Metric of the Month: Examining Finished Goods Inventory Turns

With supply chains (and the global economy more broadly) upended by COVID-19 in the first quarter of 2020, carefully managing inventory turnover, including understanding the benefits and risks, is vital. It has also become more difficult than ever.

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Net Promoter Score in Procurement

NPS can be a very effective tool for measuring internal procurement stakeholder loyalty and can help keep supplier relationships healthy as well.

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Metric of the Month: Trends in Structuring Supply Chain Analytics

Faced with vast and ever-growing amounts of data, the number of supply chain leaders that actively turn to analytics for decision making support is growing.

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10 Important Skills for Future-Ready Procurement Professionals

While no one can know what the future will bring, individuals who actively invest in building their skills in these key areas will be well-prepared come what may.