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Three months into 2025, we have seen a barrage of on-again, off-again tariffs that have supply chain and logistics teams reeling, as they must rethink everything from next weeks shipping route to their foundational network models. That may sound impossible, but new technology places this capability within the reach of every organization.
Financial crises, global tensions, supply shortages, technological innovations, and regulatory changes are inevitable we just cant predict when theyll strike. This uncertainty makes dynamic inventory replenishment optimization essential for business success. Disruptions in the supply chain happen with surprising regularity.
In follow-up qualitative interviews, one of the largest issues with organizational alignment was metric definition and a clear definition of supply chain excellence. In my post Mea Culpa, I reference my work with the Gartner Supply Chain Hierarchy of Metrics. Error is error, but is it the most important metric? My answer is no.
Lean models alone are no longer sufficient. All of this points to a larger issue: systems that perform well under stable conditions but lack the flexibility to respond when those conditions change. AI is helping companies better detect risk, model alternatives, and make faster decisions with more confidence.
Retrofitting existing infrastructure with energy-efficient technologies further enhances sustainability efforts. Critical practices include: Circular Supply Chains: Designing systems that minimize waste and emphasize recycling and reuse. Advanced route optimization tools further support these goals.
Small companies outperform large companies, and the marquee customers of major supply chain planning technology providers underperform. The issue is that when companies optimize functional metrics, they throw the supply chain out of balance and sub-optimize value. This shift improves modeling options and the use of disparate data.
The global supply chain landscape is undergoing significant transformations, influenced by rapid technological advancements, shifting consumer expectations, and the intricacies of international commerce. Preparing the next generation to excel in this dynamic field requires more than traditional education methods.
Picture this: You’re a warehouse manager, and with a few taps on your smartphone, you instantly know the exact location and quantity of every item in your inventory. That’s not science fiction—it’s the power of mobile inventory management. Ready to turn your inventory from a headache into a strategic asset?
Senior leaders must think beyond incremental improvements, embracing systemic innovation to achieve significant environmental impact. Smart energy management systems further enhance efficiency by tracking and optimizing energy use in real-time. Reducing carbon emissions is a cornerstone of this effort.
If there’s a bright spot anywhere it’s the fact that, as logistics challenges have grown, so has the availability of advanced technologies to manage these challenges. For logistics teams, digital control towers add maximum value when they’re integrated with the transportation management system (TMS). Warehouse Task Automation.
This year’s conference brought together industry leaders, tech pioneers, and retail professionals to address challenges and opportunities, to explore technologies and strategies that promise to revolutionize the industry. Agent AI is emerging as a game-changing tool for understanding and responding to customer behavior in real-time.
To achieve those results, “we had to massage the platform to accept emissions data from our carriers,” Mr. De Golia explained. The model allowed Microsoft to run many scenarios and supported trading off service reliability, cost, and carbon emissions. A clear goal needs to be combined with good data and metrics.
Beyond simply improving forecast accuracy, todays ML-powered demand forecasting software uncovers hidden supply trends, anticipates pricing fluctuations, and enables proactive supply chain planning decisions. Even more impressive, lost sales due to stockouts can decrease by up to 65%, while inventory reductions of 20% to 50% are possible.
Supply chain efficiency is the cornerstone of success and involves the effective management of processes, resources, and technologies from procurement to production, transportation to warehousing. In the automotive sector, manufacturers are simultaneously reducing inventory costs and delivery times.
By combining leadership and technology, I believed that we had the opportunity to create a better supply chain. The gap is the result of the stewpot of corporate politics, misguided consultants, and over-hyped technologies. When compared to pre-recession years, we ended the decade with twenty more days of inventory. I was wrong.
To keep customers like my dad satisfied, RGD and Quick-commerce companies need to invest in new technologies to optimize the supply chain and logistics operations. These technologies are often invisible to the end-user but make a big difference in keeping the promises about product availability, freshness, and speed of delivery.
The future inventory fire sale. One of my stark realizations this year is that smaller companies are beating larger and often more established companies on growth metrics, inventory turns, operating margin, and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC). (In The metrics selection resulted from work with Arizona State University in 2013.)
trillion distortion inventory problem. Trillion Inventory Distortion Problem In this podcast, Karl Swensen, CEO and Co-founder of Pull Logic, discusses how their AI-enabled technology helps retailers, brands, and manufacturers reduce lost sales by addressing supply chain and selling process failure points.
End-to-end supply chain visibility, planning, and execution support software are critical in agile supply chain performance. CPG companies that utilize an autonomous supply chain technology see a reduction in their inventory and cost and an increase in revenue.
That’s where manufacturing inventory management software comes in. The right software can streamline your production, optimize stock levels, and even help you save money. In this ultimate guide, we’ll break down everything you need to know about manufacturing inventory management software.
Connected technology transforms traditional supply chains into dynamic systems capable of real-time decisions and proactive problem-solving. Data analytics also offers actionable insights for: Inventory Management: See stock levels across multiple locations in real-time.
The Company was attempting to gain economies of scale by grouping manufacturing technologies within a common infrastructure to reap the benefits of a co-generation facility, a centralized warehouse, and a talented administrative team. Engineers could sign up for hour-long blocks to use the new systems. Why Jump Now?
It’s a holistic approach that blends strategic planning, streamlined processes, and the right technology to transform your warehouse into a well-oiled, profit-generating machine. Eight proven optimization strategies, combining technology, best practices, and sustainable solutions.
Definition As I follow the evolution of supply chain technology, I am struck by what I see as a stream of paradox and anomaly, and the tendency of supply chain leaders to cling to convention. technologies. The world of NoSQL unified data models is inconceivable to most. I constantly ask myself, why? Art of the Possible.
Each model has its perks, and choosing the best fit can feel like walking a tightrope. On top of that, we’ll break down how to approach selecting the right centralized purchasing system for your business needs. Keep reading to learn: What is centralized purchasing?
The supply chain is a complex non-linear system. At each company, there is a relationship between the metrics of growth, margin, inventory, customer service, and asset strategy. For the purpose of this article, I will use Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) as the proxy metric to discuss asset utilization.) My answer is no.
No company in either the household non-durable (consumer goods) or the food manufacturing group beat their peer group on the balanced scorecard of growth, inventory turns, operating margin, and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) for 2013-2022. My reply to my friend is that “The supply chain is a complex non-linear system.
Driving an excellent supply chain depends on how people are recruited and managed, processes, and the technology used. In the annual report where they report on their key performance indicators (KPIs), they don’t just report on core financial metrics and the NPS, they also have people metrics. The company recorded 1.9
Today’s article comes from Matt Boland at Koerber Supply Chain, and examines how technology can help improve on time in (OTIF) performance. Ultimately it allows the measurement of a business’ ability to deliver on their promise while capturing the highest gross margin on their inventory investment.
What is the Perfect Delivery Metric? Improving on this metric will always involve a focus on people and processes, but often also includes implementing new, more robust, supply chain applications. The wrong metrics drive suboptimal behaviors and metrics can often be manipulated.
In healthcare, efficient inventory management is paramount to patient safety. Modern medical inventorysoftware offers a transformative solution, moving beyond outdated methods like spreadsheets and manual counts to provide real-time visibility and automated alerts.
Management practices such as lean manufacturing and just-in-time inventory management, along with globalization, have made tremendous impact on cost and service, but have accentuated risk. Metrics such as lead-times, forecast accuracy, inventory levels, and service are used to measure operational risks.
How are companies rethinking their liquidity management strategies in response to the recent degradation across major working capital metrics? In the wake of economic uncertainty, many companies have experienced a degradation in key working capital metrics.
Without sufficient data, AI models can’t uncover meaningful patterns, make accurate predictions, or provide valuable insights for informed decision-making in complex and dynamic environments. At the same time, feeding your AI models too much data can also be a problem. Data is the lifeblood of AI in the supply chain.
In this new, connected world, the Warehouse of the Future is about achieving key operational metrics and exceeding customer service requirements more profitably while supporting sustainability goals. This helps in optimizing inventory management as well as in making the warehouse safer while increasing visibility.
The key areas to consider when upgrading to the cloud include: The Value of Cloud Technology Cost Competitiveness Performance Expectations Upgrades Responsiveness Support Expertise & Response The Value of Cloud Technology Which business drivers and advantages are motivating companies to shift to the cloud?
The second step is usually a large implementation of a technology project–Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Planning or Analytics. The first evolution of technologies were built by best-of-breed solution vendors. This new solution was favored by the Information Technology (IT) organization.
The traditional metrics of excellence cost efficiency, on-time delivery while still important, are no longer sufficient in an era defined by volatility, complexity and political changes. The convergence of artificial intelligence and digital networking technologies is fundamentally reshaping our operating models.
There are supply chain and demand analytics models that describe the type of analytics being deployed (e.g., Now Gartner has created a different look at the issue by creating a five-stage maturity model for assessing the overall maturity level of your organization in using supply chain analytics. descriptive, prescriptive, etc.).
That’s why it’s essential to be sure you’re equipping your organization with the right demand planning software. Here are our answers to some of the most common questions about demand planning software. What is demand planning software? What are the benefits of demand planning software?
Traditionally, procurement has been a process weighed down by manual tasks, fragmented systems, and endless paperwork. AI in procurement refers to using advanced technologies to make procurement processes faster, more efficient, and data-driven. Today, procurement is undergoing a transformation.
Using balance sheet data from 2011 to 2019, we chart companies’ progress by peer group on rate of improvement and performance in the metrics of growth, operating margin, inventory turns, and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC). The focus is “How can I make better decisions using insights from planning technologies?”
The obvious danger of this is that business rules and data governance often don’t exist from department to department or user to user, leaving an overall picture into the health of the business that is foggy because KPIs and metrics do not correlate across the organization. A great example of this comes from a Logility customer.
However, AI’s inability to solve the very limited problem of ensuring that inventory is located in the right place in a warehouse suggests that planners don’t have to worry too much about job security. For fulfillment to be efficient, a warehouse needs the right inventory located in the right slots in a warehouse.
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