August, 2014

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Supply Chain Talent: A Broken Link

Supply Chain Shaman

'These are the grim facts. Only 9% of companies feel that they manage supply chain talent better than peers.The issues are growing. Job turnover is 15% and new positions remain open for 4 months before they are filled. I think that supply chain talent is a broken link in the supply chain. I also believe that the adoption of new mental models is a barrier to progress.

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6 maps that explain global supply chains

The Network Effect

'We all know that supply chains are becoming more and more global, but how often can we actually see them becoming more global? The site vox.com has compiled 38 maps that explain the global economy. We’ve selected 6 that are especially relevant to supply chains. #1: How Sugar Circulates Globally. Even seemingly simple commodities have complex supply chains.

Global 269
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Innovative Approaches to Supply Chain Risk

Kinaxis

'by John Westerveld Imagine yourself in this scenario; You wake up at the usual time, and over coffee, you review the news. As you flip through the articles on your iPad, you see it. A major earthquake in Taiwan. Then you get the e-mail. One of your key suppliers uses a supplier that is in the area affected by the quake and is effectively shut down for the foreseeable future… Uh oh.

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Uber, the Next Amazon?

Talking Logistics

'Remember when Amazon.com was just an online bookstore? Today the company is a diverse online retailer, for both consumers and businesses , as well as a logistics service provider , cloud services provider , tablet and smartphone developer, and much more. Remember when Uber was just an app to get a ride somewhere? That’s what we’ll be saying in the not too distant future, as the company continues to experiment and branch into new areas.

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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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Small is the new big: Millennials & the future of retail

DELMIA Quintiq

'Do you shop online? If you answered “Yes”, then you probably fall into the demographic who has contributed to the massive closure of brick-and-mortar stores. In the past decade, physical stores have been facing increased competition from online retailers catering to Millennials. This has pushed brands to rethink marketing strategies as they learn how to ride the Web 2.0 wave.

More Trending

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Judging Supply Chain Improvement: Campbell Soup Case Study

Supply Chain Shaman

'Over the course of the last two years, we at Supply Chain Insight s have worked on a methodology to gauge supply chain improvement. We named it the Supply Chain Index. We have found that supply chain metrics are gnarly and complicated.During the last two months, we have been interviewing supply chain leaders to get their views on the methodology.

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Why the supply chain should be more social

The Network Effect

'No company has ‘truly’ modeled the full relationship set between how companies interact with other companies upstream and downstream in the supply chain. Some of the largest companies in the world struggle to maintain accurate master data about their suppliers. Even companies who have invested in building an accurate database of their direct suppliers know very little about the next tier of suppliers upstream in the supply chain.

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The Next Great Disruption Coming to Supply Chains

Kinaxis

'by CJ Wehlage What would you say is the next great disruption coming to our supply chain world? I’ve heard some common themes, such as weather, political changes, even war. Those are potential, and somewhat out of our control. However, there’s one great disruption already occurring, which has yet to truly “touch” supply chain. It’s the consumer.

Modeling 263
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Time for Companies to Rethink Their Customer Delivery Strategy

Talking Logistics

'While couriers have long been used for local or “last mile” business-to-business deliveries in the U.S., and for consumer deliveries in densely populated areas of the world such as Europe and Asia, the average American thinks only of big name players like FedEx, UPS, or a name such as Con-way that they saw on the side of a semi-trailer truck on the highway, when it comes to delivery.

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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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Uncovering the hidden lessons in ???The Goal??? (part 2)

DELMIA Quintiq

'If you read my previous post about The Goal, you already know who Alex Rogo is. Alex achieves the almost impossible feat of turning around his failing production plant and making it the most profitable operation in the company. For this, he uses the Theory of Constraints (TOC), following five steps of continuous improvement. Even more interesting, he determines these five steps by analyzing an event (hiking with his sons scout troop) that is completely unrelated to a production process

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Why Russia’s Agricultural Import Ban is more Supply Chain than Economics

Logistics Viewpoints

In July the US, the European Union (EU), and select other countries instituted a number of trade and financial sanctions against Russia for its involvement in the separatist movement in neighboring Ukraine. The EU banned the export of military technology and certain technology used for oil and gas exploration and production in deep water, the […].

Ukraine 206
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Don’t Let the Old Horse Die

Supply Chain Shaman

'Sales and operations alignment. It is the promise. For many this seems like an old horse to ride. It is tough because operations and commercial teams are not naturally aligned, and the implementation of an S&OP process is not a quick fix. The processes of S&OP are now over 35 years in evolution. In many ways, they are quite different, and in many they are the same.

S&OP 268
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Why overcoming stale data is key to achieving a great supply chain

The Network Effect

'If we feel that today we have achieved a level of goodness across our supply network planning and operations, how do we target and mobilize toward greatness? The challenge for us in today’s competitive environment is how to evolve from ‘good’ to ‘great.’ We’ve gotten to ‘good’ by deploying the dominant technologies of today, but whose architectural design unfortunately perpetuates significant latency and inefficiency across the supply network.

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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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“Storage Wars” Rescues Supply Chain Ignominy

Kinaxis

'by CJ Wehlage. Take a good long look at this picture. That’s my ignominy. That’s my garage. When we moved to San Diego, we loved the weather, we loved the ocean sunsets and we loved getting rid of our parka coats, gloves, scarves and tossle caps. Roddy Martin, my colleague from AMR Research, now with Accenture, often uses the term “ah-ha” moment.

San Diego 240
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Managed Services: The “Stretch Armstrong” of Logistics

Talking Logistics

'One of my favorite toys as a boy was Stretch Armstrong, a muscle-man action figure with a stretchable body. As the catalog picture below illustrates, you could pull its arms and legs up to four feet in length (although I never had the strength to pull them out that far). “Stretch him long, stretch him thin, watch him return to shape again” — over and over again, until he ultimately developed a tear, and the great mystery of what was inside (red gelled corn syrup) came oozing out. .

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The Mechanisms of Supply Chain Resilience

SCM Research

'Two ingredients are needed to create supply chain resilience: robustness, which is proactive, and agility, which is reactive. Robustness builds on anticipation “to gain knowledge about potential changes that might occur in the future” and preparedness “to maintain a stable situation” Agility builds on visibility “to gain knowledge about actual changes that are currently occurring” and speed “to get back to a stable situation” Wieland, A., & Wa

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Use Simulation Planning to Predict Future Supply Chain Performance

Logistics Viewpoints

'What if you could accurately predict how your supply chain will perform in the future? Know how a strategy change will impact your service levels or costs? Predict when you will stock out or be late with a shipment? To do this you need ESP. Not extra-sensory perception, but it’s the next best thing from […]. The post Use Simulation Planning to Predict Future Supply Chain Performance appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.

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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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See the Future of Your Supply Chain with Predictive Lead Time

Demand Solutions

I’ve seen it play out so many times. A growing, well-established manufacturing company decides to take its business processes to the next level by implementing an ERP system. The company evaluates solutions, makes the best choice for its needs, and begins the implementation process. Months later, the new system is live, and the company’s planners begin building their business processes into the system.

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Supply Chain’s New World Order: How Companies can go from From Good To Great

The Network Effect

'Today and in the posts that follow, I want to discuss the technology transformation that many supply chains are undergoing, and discuss how these changes can help the wider organization move from “good” to “great” Enterprises today face a conundrum in the optimization of their supply network performance. While many have driven significant improvements over the past few years through the application of advanced tools, processes, analytics, and measurement systems, how can

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Streamlined Sales and Operations Planning: A Konica Minolta Case Study

Kinaxis

'by Melissa Clow Today we have a great customer, Konica Minolta, that recently allowed us to write up their sales and operations planning story and I believe that it has merit in sharing with our readers! At Konica Minolta, the IT Equipment Business team was struggling to get a quick and comprehensive view of the global supply chain network. The Japanese consumer electronics company didnt have visibility into the impact of supply and demand changes on the business.

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What is an Outside-In Supply Chain?

Talking Logistics

'If you want to stay ahead of your competition, take the step beyond the traditional approach to supply chain. Most supply chain analysts believe that to remain competitive, companies must transform their supply chains from being focused inward to focusing on trying to predict demand to customer-driven chains that are organized to respond to demand with lightning speed.

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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 Books for Your Bookshelf

Supply Chain Insights

'This year, we will publish two new books: Supply Chain Metrics That Matter and The Shaman’s Journal. We are adding these two new books for your bookshelf to stand beside Bricks Matter which published in December, 2012. In 2015, it is our goal to publish another new book, Lessons in Supply Chain Leadership. Each book takes a new twist on the old topic of supply chain excellence.

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Shippers, Face It, Carriers Now Have the Advantage

Logistics Viewpoints

'When Shakespeare used the phrase, “The worm has turned,” he knew his audience would understand that he meant a reversal of fortune. “Worm” was a term for ‘dragon.’ In fairy tales, the flying dragon spewing fire would ravage fields and villages. To be in the dragon’s path resulted in destruction. In shipper/carrier relationships, too many […].

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Reducing Risk and Creating More Resilient Supply Chains

SCM Research

'That does a supply chain risk researcher’s heart good: MIT Sloan Management Review has recently published two interesting case studies about the interface between risk and supply chain management. First, in the magazine’s spring issue, Chopra and Sodhi call attention to a dilemma faced by most managers: “Solutions to reduce risk mean little unless they are evaluated against their impact on cost efficiency” To protect supply chains from disruptions anyway, the authors sug

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The supply chain implications of rising healthcare costs…

The Network Effect

'The pressure to contain or drive down health system costs continues to be of big focus. In the US, healthcare expenditure per person has risen by almost 78 per cent since 2000 to USD 8,700 in 2011 (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services 2012). In Europe, the proportion of healthcare costs as a share of GDP is predicted to rise from 6.7 in 2008 to 7.6 per cent by 2020.

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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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Remembering: Compromise. Confessions of a Supply Chain Dropout by Laura Dionne, TriQuint at Kinexions

Kinaxis

'by Melissa Clow. Like I’ve mentioned in my last couple of Thursday blogs, we are starting to gear up for this year’s Kinexions (our annual training & user conference ). A few weeks ago I began to reminisce about our fun customer videos from past conferences and I decided to create a blog series to share. So, on this ‘Throw Back Thursday’, I would like to share this video of Laura Dionne, director worldwide operations planning, presenting “Compromise.

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This Week in Logistics News (August 4-8, 2014)

Talking Logistics

'At the top of my family tree, the one planted here after my parents arrived from Cuba, youll find a small bodega nestled in the branches. For more than two decades, my dad and uncles labored from sunrise to sunset, six days a week, in that neighborhood store, and their hard work and sacrifices opened the door to opportunity for me and my sister and cousins.

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Supply Chain Metrics To Avoid Before It's Too Late!

Supply Chain Opz

'Supply Chain Metrics are one of the most important best practices in supply chain management because " You can''t manage what you can''t measure ". However, under certain circumstances, metrics are not used or implemented properly. This article will explain to you 7 kind of supply chain metrics that you should pay special attention to. 1) Productivity Metrics : the easiest way to communicate and show the value of a supply chain operations improvement initiative is to link productivity to cost s