June, 2016

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There’s Blood in the Supply Chain

ToolsGroup

This week’s posting is actually a video rather than a written blog. The National Health Service (NHS), the world’s largest health care organization, has implemented a new supply chain planning system for managing the United Kingdom’s blood supply. Working with the Chartered Institute of Logistics Transport, we created a 4 minute video showing the UK blood supply chain and the new system, which I think you will find interesting.

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How Can We Heal the Global Supply Chain?

Supply Chain Shaman

Today, I unpacked my bags. In the last six months, in my travels, I have presented to supply chain teams in China, Belgium, France, Germany, Peru, Mexico, Netherlands, South Africa, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. To streamline my efforts, I just kept a packed bag in the closet. I strongly feel that if I am going to cover the global supply chain that I need to experience it.

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The internet of (supply chain) things

Kinaxis

by John Westerveld Lightbulbs that change colors from a command on your phone and turn on when you enter the room, thermostats that can figure out when you are in the house and adjust accordingly, refrigerators that e-mail you when you are out of milk, garage doors that let you know when they are open, doors that can be unlocked from your phone even when you are across the country, cars that drive themselves, tags you can put on your keys so you will never lose them again.

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Five Steps to Navigating Supply Chain Analytics Data Challenges

Talking Logistics

Having been in the game of supply chain analytics for so long, we’ve noticed that data is the single biggest challenge our customers and consultants encounter. Supply chain data is distributed in myriad enterprise and external databases, access to the data is limited, it’s in many different formats and structures, it’s missing important pieces and it’s in huge volumes.

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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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Time to rethink: How much further can your business go?

DELMIA Quintiq

What does the future hold for your business? And what can you do to ensure a leading position in the market 10 years from now? I was talking to a postal company the other day that didn’t have the answer to either question. Postal companies are seeing a three percent drop in volume every year, racking up huge losses. The postal company I met with was no exception.

More Trending

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When SMBs Hit the Inventory Planning Complexity Wall

ToolsGroup

Inventory planning is especially important to small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs). Nobody wants to tie up more working capital than necessary in inventory, but SMBs typically have leaner resources, and a higher cost of capital means it’s more expensive to fund excess stock. And if a company is growing rapidly, capital is not only costly but may even require selling valuable equity.

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Go Horizontal!

Supply Chain Shaman

Functional silos define today’s supply chain organization. The silos compete. They lack alignment. This lack of alignment is an impediment to improving balance sheet results. I am a product of traditional, silo-based thinking. My first job was in manufacturing in the 1980’s. I did not understand warehousing and transportation until reassignment to a logistics role in 1985.

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Is Hyperloop the Next Great Supply Chain Technology?

Kinaxis

by Melissa Clow This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting , a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management. We’re always trying to stay on top of Supply Chain developments at Argentus. And this sometimes takes us into looking at the emerging technologies that are poised to have a significant impact on the function.

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Toyota and USPS See Opportunities for Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Management

Talking Logistics

It was back in January 2015, after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about bitcoin, that my eyes were opened to the potential for blockchain technology to transform supply chain management. As I wrote at the time in Bitcoin: A New Supply Chain Operating System? : Imagine a bitcoin being a unit of inventory and a digital wallet (“bitcoin address”) being an inventory-keeping location, such as a store, distribution center, or truck trailer.

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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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Impact Factors of Supply Chain Management Journals

SCM Research

Few days ago, Thomson Reuters published the 2015 impact factors of well-known management journals as part of their Journal Citation Reports. Two SCM-related journals have an impact factor of 4 or larger: Journal of Supply Chain Management and Journal of Operations Management. Two other journals have an impact factor between 2.5 and 3: Supply Chain Management: An International Journal and Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management.

Journal 154
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AIMMS Sponsors the 18th Annual Supply Chain & Logistics Summit in Barcelona

AIMMS

Last week, part of our EMEA team (Christophe, Marcel and Kim) attended the Supply Chain & Logistics Summit as a sponsor for the fifth consecutive time. The conference took place in Barcelona. The overall theme of the Summit was the Value Chain and How to Build the Competitive Supply Chain of the Future. This main topic was covered throughout the whole program.

AIMMS 156
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Gartner Asks: Are You (and your Supply Chain) Bimodal?

ToolsGroup

Taking a bimodal approach to supply chains was the pervasive theme at this year’s Gartner North American Supply Chain Executive Conference. Simply stated, bimodal means simultaneously keeping a dual focus. Or as in F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “First-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in your mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”.

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What Is Blockchain Technology, and What Is Its Potential Impact on the Supply Chain?

GlobalTranz

The modern supply chain continues to seek more cost savings and greater transparency and efficiency in all processes. While large, centralized systems have been created to manage the flow of goods and data, a single problem remains. This data can be changed from its original form, causing some to feel the supply chain is not being fully transparent with supplier, manufacturing and logistics processes.

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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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Evolution of B2B Networks

Supply Chain Shaman

Today Thoma Bravo, a private equity investment firm, announced a definitive agreement to purchase Elemica, a provider of Supply Chain Operating Networks for the chemical industry. In 2014 Thoma Bravo acquired GHX, a Supply Chain Operating Network for healthcare. The Elemica announcement contained the obligatory positive quotes and promises to customers.

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The shape of a supply chain distribution network

Kinaxis

by Iman Niroomand Today, I’d like to discuss distribution networks shapes. A distribution network is a channel that a company uses to get its products from the manufacturer to the end customer. The shape of this distribution network could vary from a small and simple size network to very complicated networks such as power grid network. The factors that are involved in defining the shape of the distribution network are end customer product demands, product variety, product availability, response

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Impact Factors of Supply Chain Management Journals

SCM Research

Few days ago, Thomson Reuters published the 2015 impact factors of well-known management journals as part of their Journal Citation Reports. Two SCM-related journals have an impact factor of 4 or larger: Journal of Supply Chain Management and Journal of Operations Management. Two other journals have an impact factor between 2.5 and 3: Supply Chain Management: An International Journal and Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management.

Journal 154
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Need Robust and Flexible Supply Chain Analytics? Build your own Apps

AIMMS

Apps have come to define the way we work and live in many ways. We have cars with A pps , watches running A pps , TVs that operate with A pps …as the phrase goes “There’s an App for That.” There are Apps out there for just about anything, it’s hard to imagine a world without them. Why do we love Apps so much? We get the information we need upfront, they can be used anytime, anywhere, they help us connect, and they serve a specific purpose.

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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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How Gartner Sees the Future of Supply Chain Planning

ToolsGroup

Source: Algorithmic Supply Chain Planning: The Future of SCP , Amber Salley, May 2016. Gartner has taken a look at the future and sees lots of algorithms. The analyst firm says algorithms “are now feasting on the wealth of data becoming available, leveraging the huge computing resources in the cloud and becoming a pivotal source of competitive differentiation.

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Outsourcing Logistics: Does It Make Sense for Everyone?

GlobalTranz

The benefits of outsourcing logistics processes to a third-party logistics provider (3PL) are well documented. As the world’s economy has become increasingly complex, it has become impossible for a single entity to control all of the warehousing, transportation and administrative tasks that come with shipping and managing inventory. For this reason, more companies are turning to 3PLs to help with cost reductions and overall management of supply chain processes.

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Will Blockchain Technology Revolutionize Supply Chain Applications?

Logistics Viewpoints

Building unbreachable supply chain applications is virtually impossible. So it was with great interest that I listened to how blockchain technology could be used to create robust tendering and visibility that can be wholly trusted.

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S&OP Summer Reading Series by Accenture Strategy Guest Blogger

Kinaxis

by Steven J. Puricelli. Kinaxis recently asked me to author a blog series on the topic of Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). Naturally, I was flattered to be asked to contribute to their popular 21 st Century Supply Chain blog. But I was also very excited, because as a strategy consultant at Accenture, I’m able to share a wide range of client experiences on ‘what good looks like’ and what business issues clients are facing across a wide range of industries.

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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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Drones and Robots in the Warehouse

PINC

The 3PL Summit and Chief Supply Chain Officer forum brought together supply chain executives and industry experts to discuss the latest trends in the industry. The event happened in Chicago between June 20th and June 22nd.

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Need Robust and Flexible Supply Chain Analytics? Build your own Apps

AIMMS

My takeaways from Gartner’s Supply Chain Executive Conference 2016. Apps have come to define the way we work and live in many ways. We have cars with A pps , watches running A pps , TVs that operate with A pps …as the phrase goes “There’s an App for That.” There are Apps out there for just about anything, it’s hard to imagine a world without them.

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How to Capture Full Divestiture Value with a 3PL

Talking Logistics

A divestiture is a major transition that impacts all areas of a business, including supply chain reliability and efficiency. Today, shippers face increased regulations, unstable market conditions and capacity concerns that make it near impossible for a newly divested company to achieve all of its goals without the expertise and support of a third-party logistics (3PL) provider.

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Current State of the Logistics and Freight Economy

GlobalTranz

From cloud-based systems to transportation management, the state of the logistics industry is evolving to expand an increasing number of services. Meanwhile, the overall capacity of shipments is climbing higher, reports Jeff Berman of Logistics Management, and the driver shortage is becoming more essential as full truckload shipments decrease. Although an initial view of the logistics and freight industry seems stale, it represents how the flow of goods and services are sprouting and delivering

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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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Machine Learning for Supply Chain Efficiencies

Logistics Viewpoints

A few weeks ago I attended the ToolsGroup Supply Chain Transformation conference in Boston. One of the more interesting sessions I attended was “Predictive Commerce and Machine Learning” featuring ToolsGroup CEO Yossi Shamir. While Yossi obviously touted the benefits of the ToolsGroup product suite, the session focused more on the big concept of why supply chain needs automation now.

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De-segregating the supply chain: Lessons learned in the air

Kinaxis

by Tom Gregorchik I remember while traveling last fall getting that dreaded alert we all hate see on our iPhones. “Flight Delayed” is how the first few words of the text message read. While travelers running late and those hoping to get free vouchers on overbook flights cheered, I went into a mode of figuring out quickly what the best course of action was for me to ensure I got where I needed to be.

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Shipping is still lost at sea when it comes to big data

DELMIA Quintiq

The world of container shipping is going through a prolonged period of instability due to oversupply of new ships entering service. There is also a fall in demand for the transportation of goods between major economies. Falling container shipping rates created a windfall for shippers and brought tears to shipping lines and ports. Uncertain recovery provides an opportunity to look at how better pricing, capacity management, and business optimization could combat the inevitable decline in yield.

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