December, 2014

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Is the Package Under your Tree?

Supply Chain Shaman

'Details matter. Execution is essential. …it might make a difference on what is under your tree. In 2014, ecommerce strategies grew in importance. In the last decade, ecommerce was a permissible and desirable channel only for retailers. At that time, manufacturers talked about customer-centric supply chains, but were afraid to aggressively adopt ecommerce strategies.

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12 tips to recharge your supply chain

DELMIA Quintiq

'Ready to supercharge your supply chain for 2015? There’s no better time than the present. Here are 12 actionable tips to revitalize various aspects of your supply chain. Supply chain visibility: Not for your eyes only. Tip 1: Make sure you can see what’s happening – always. How certain are you that the due date you are about to quote is accurate? Spreadsheet-based planning – and even certain sophisticated planning tools – can fail to give you the visibility you need to check the accuracy of you

Modeling 299
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[Infographic] The Power of 3D Printing in Manufacturing: An Illustrated Guide

GlobalTranz

'Editor’s Note: We love talking about and reporting on technology which effects and also makes the lives’ of manufacturing companies much better. We’ve been providing manufacturing companies and shippers with a web-based transportation management system since 1998, before web-based TMS was as prolific as it is today. We built one of the first Mobile TMS apps , have the only end-to-end LTL eCommerce Freight shipping applications for B2B shopping carts, continue to innovate on in

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Your supply chain is costing you money – Reason #9: Relentless pursuit of one metric at the expense of other metrics.

Kinaxis

'by John Westerveld. Over the years, working for and with numerous manufacturing companies, I’ve seen many supply chain practices that cost companies money. Over the next several weeks, I’ll outline these issues and discuss some ideas around how to avoid these practices. You can find the previous posts here: Reason #1: Offshoring without getting the full picture.

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4 Ways To Drive Supply Chain Excellence in the Food Industry

The Supplier Relationship Management Playbook is your guide to building effective supplier partnerships that drive supply chain excellence. This playbook equips supply chain professionals with strategies for managing compliance, tracking performance, and fostering collaboration to reduce supply chain risks. Inside, you’ll find: Strategies for Compliance: Best practices to help meet regulatory standards.

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Expert Explains How to Improve Supply Chain Efficiency

Supply Chain Opz

'Over the years, supply chain professionals have been trying to improve supply chain efficiency so they can gain an edge over the competitions. In this guest commentary, Thomas Roemer, Executive Director of the Leaders for Global Operations at MIT Sloan School of Management will show you where the problem lies and ways we can deal with this issue. Companies seeking to further improve their supply chain efficiency will have to continue fighting their old foe – variability – albeit in a set of new

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Supply Chains By the Numbers

Supply Chain Shaman

'Tomorrow starts a new year. It will take me awhile to adjust. Intellectually, while I will know that year has changed, I will screw-up time, and time, again by writing 2014 on documents for many, many months. For me, tonight sitting facing the city skyline in the dark, 2015 sounds so far in the future; but, I know that it is on the horizon. I take the years that end in the numbers five and zero a bit more seriously than other years.

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Our must-read picks for 2014

DELMIA Quintiq

'As another year comes to a close, we want to say a big thank you to all our readers for another great year on the Quintiq blog. To end on a high note, we’ve decided to break convention and have our team pick the posts they liked most this year. Enjoy: 1. Next generation supply chains: The inside story. An intelligent planning solution can do wonders for you, but are your people open to change?

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Electronic Data Interchange or EDI in Transportation: Breaking Down What it is and How It Works

GlobalTranz

'Today begins our series about electronic data interchange or EDI in transportation. We take pride at Cerasis, as a third party logistics company who has developed a proprietary web-based transportation management system , to offer technology solutions to our shippers so they may remain as efficient as possible and have access to information at their fingertips.

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Your supply chain is costing you money – Reason #10 Failure to adequately train your supply chain planning staff

Kinaxis

'by John Westerveld Over the years, working for and with numerous manufacturing companies, I’ve seen many supply chain practices that cost companies money. Over the next several weeks, I’ll outline these issues and discuss some ideas around how to avoid these practices. You can find the previous posts here: Reason #1: Offshoring without getting the full picture.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

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Facebook for Supply Chain Communication and Collaboration?

Talking Logistics

'“Communicate, Collaborate, Innovate” — I’ve been using that line as the subtitle of my keynote presentations this year. My first question to the audience: Why communicate, collaborate, and innovate in that order? Why not innovate first? The short answer is that communication and collaboration — especially, and most importantly, between people — is the foundation of supply chain management, and you can’t effectively innovate without that strong foundation.

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When did Supply Chain Solutions Become Mature?

Logistics Viewpoints

'I am not sure exactly when it happened, but one day I woke up and realized that supply chain solutions such as warehouse management systems (WMS) are finally considered “mature” software applications. Being in the logistics Industry for 45 years, this was quite an epiphany for me. I spent my early years working with companies […].

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Power B2B Networks

Supply Chain Shaman

'If you ask companies if they would like better inventory and global supply chain visibility, you will get an overwhelming answer of, “Yes!” However, if you ask companies how they define and deliver global business visibility, you will get stares like, “Doesn’t everyone know what global visibility means?” The answer is simple.

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Smart business planning: What 10 experts say

DELMIA Quintiq

'There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it? You would, if you had joined hundreds of business influencers who attended the Quintiq World Tour this year. Themed “Smart planning. Smart business”, the inaugural Quintiq World Tour is a series of high-powered events held in 10 of the biggest cities around the world. From planning the most modern train in Europe to optimizing the logistics of crude oil delivery along the Mississippi River to managing one-third of the world’s airspace, Quintiq World

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Freight Procurement Simplified: Bids from Hours to Minutes

Speaker: Eric Berdinis, Ran Sun, & Chris Chmielewski

Procuring freight can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and error-prone. If you’re frustrated with the complex and manual processes for obtaining bids for your contract and spot freight, you’re not alone. In today’s fast-moving supply chain environment, optimizing these processes is critical to staying competitive and cutting costs. Join this exclusive webinar with experts from Uber Freight to learn how the latest digital tools and automation can transform your freight procurement strategy by strea

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5 Fundamental Practices to Make The Implementation of Warehouse Technology Pay off Big Time

GlobalTranz

'Warehouse operations and their efficiency are a key to any company that deals with freight, shipping and inventories. When efficiency lags behind however, orders are lost and things get out of control. This chaotic environment (usually due to those companies who are still using manual process in the warehouse) will directly affect the profits and reputation to customers of your company.

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Best of the Best Supply Chain Blog Posts of 2014

Kinaxis

'by Melissa Clow. As you take time over the holidays to sit back and reflect, here are the top ten excerpts from the best of the best posts on the Kinaxis supply chain blog. They touch on hot topics and industry trends discussed over the past year, so grab a coffee (or a spiked eggnog) and enjoy! We look forward to continuing the conversation in the New Year. #1 “And much as we have had to rethink the first applications that were simply a digitization of a paper-based paradigm, we need to rethin

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Google Will Acquire a 3PL – And Other Supply Chain and Logistics Predictions for 2015

Talking Logistics

'“We will see $300 a barrel — or roughly $250 in today’s dollars — because oil supply will be so short. If you want that oil, that’s what you will have to pay for it. That will be in 2015, after the peak of oil [supply].”. Charles Maxwell, a well-known analyst at Weeden & Co., made that prediction in 2008 (see the Barron’s article What $300-a-Barrel Oil Will Mean for You ).

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Dealing with Supply Chain Big Data

Logistics Viewpoints

'My earlier blog (What is Hadoop and Why Should a Supply Chain Professional Care?) generated a lot of attention and I was asked to write a follow up. While Hadoop has a future in supply chain management, because of the massive amounts of data generated, so do plenty of other big data technologies. Think about […].

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How to Master Product Portfolio Management

Pursuing product portfolio management excellence empowers organizations to unlock the full potential of their offerings. This comprehensive guide unveils 10 essential keys that serve as the building blocks for success.

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Give New Answers to Bridget

Supply Chain Shaman

'It was a stuffy, hot day, and I found myself sitting by Bridget. The supply chain team was attempting to explain their demand-driven project. They were asking for funding; and Bridget, the treasurer, was not buying the message. On my way back to the train, I struggled with what had just happened. I had worked hard to teach the team presenting to talk the language of demand , but it was not understood at the board-room level.

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Five reasons why cloud-based supply chain tech beats traditional on-premise

The Network Effect

'PhotoAtellier (Flickr). What can we say about supply chains with 100% certainty? First, supply chain processes are inherently collaborative activities involving multiple participants whose actions must be synchronized to deliver maximum business performance. Second, supply chain are also a community in which those parties who are already present and connected will be a superior solution framework than an isolated, inward looking enterprise-centric architecture.

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The Top 10 Manufacturing Blog Posts from 2014

GlobalTranz

'As each year comes to a close, we all look back on the year that was in reflection. Today, we kick off our annual year end series highlighting the top blog posts in each of our 7 main categories: Manufacturing , Supply Chain , Logistics , 3PL , Business , Transportation , Freight. We will feature over the next 7 business days each category’s top 10 most viewed posts over the course of 2014.

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Overcoming the Challenges to Achieving End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility

Kinaxis

'by Melissa Clow The 2014 Strategic Road Map for Supply Chain Visibility research recently conducted by Gartner (and included in our new Supply Chain Visibility: Envisioning the Broader Need paper) , describes the current state of maturity as it relates to visibility, as follows: “Most supply chain organizations are at Stage 2 or 3 of supply chain maturity, and thus have an inside-out view of supply chain plans, events and data.

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The Ultimate Guide to Transportation and Load Building Optimization

Enhance your transportation and load building efficiency with our comprehensive guide. Learn to tackle today's supply chain challenges and optimize your approach with advanced planning strategies. This guide covers: Supply Chain Challenges: Discover how transportation planning can address critical issues and improve efficiency. Load Building Benefits: Understand how effective load building can enhance your transportation processes.

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New Year’s Resolution #1 for Supply Chain Planners: Improve Performance Measurement

Demand Solutions

New Year’s resolutions: useful gimmick for getting your life in order, or standing joke? The answer to this question is entirely up to you. But regardless of whether you plan to read a book every week, go running every day at 6 AM, or finally put some money in your IRA, I believe the New Year is a perfect time to make some resolutions about your supply chain.

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The Links between Product Lifecycle and Supply Chain Management

Logistics Viewpoints

'I wrote a Logistics Viewpoints article in October that discussed how Diageo has transformed its supply chain from a cost savings function to an enabler of growth-driving innovation. This case discussed how supply chain was elevated to a strategic level due to its critical role in executing new product introductions. I found the connection between […].

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2015 Predictions: Digital Marketing

Enterra Insights

'One area in which you can find a wide variety of predictions is digital marketing. The reason for all this … Continued The post 2015 Predictions: Digital Marketing appeared first on Enterra Solutions.

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Supply Chain and Logistics Predictions for 2015

Talking Logistics

'Live Episode: Tuesday, December 16 at 12:00 p.m. ET. Adrian Gonzalez will discuss in more detail his top six supply chain and logistics predictions for 2015, which he wrote about in Google Will Acquire a 3PL – And Other Supply Chain and Logistics Predictions for 2015. What do you think of Adrian’s predictions? What are your predictions for the coming year?

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What Makes a Warehouse Worker Happy?

The 2024 Newcastle Systems Worker Satisfaction Survey provides insights into the life of a warehouse worker and what matters to them.

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4 Benefits Shippers Realize when Transportation EDI is Utilized in a TMS

GlobalTranz

'According to a research study from Forrester, EDI continues to prove its worth as an electronic message data format. This research states that “the annual volume of global EDI transactions exceeds 20 billion per year and is still growing.”. As a shipper in today’s growing market, there are many advantages to shifting to the use of transportation EDI with your transportation providers or 3PLs.

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Transform your supply chain process – don’t just improve it

Kinaxis

'by John Westerveld Did you ever hear the joke about the old lumberjack? The old lumberjack came out of the forest and went for supplies. He needed a new saw – his old two-man saw had been sharpened so many times there wasn’t much left. At the store, the salesman showed him the newest tool for cutting trees called a chain saw. The salesman said that he can cut trees 10 times faster than with the two person hand saw.

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Supply Chain Planning Solutions: Are the Benefits Real? Really Real?

Demand Solutions

There has been a lot of debate in recent years about whether supply chain planning and demand planning solutions actually deliver their much-touted benefits. And I think that’s a good thing. Any time you see an industry accepting the status quo and displaying hostility to new ideas, you have a recipe for stagnation. And stagnation is the opposite of innovation.