White Paper Digest

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White Paper Digest is designed to bring readers up-to-date information on all aspects of supply chain management. We're building a database of SCM whitepapers, and you can help. E-mail us with whitepaper recommendations: editorial@inboundlogistics.com.

Title: France's Logistics Property Markets - Distribution Gateway to Southern Europe (Fall 2007)
Length: 16 pages
Summary: This report on France is the second in a ProLogis Research series investigating how European logistics property markets operate. Currently, France is caught up in a sweeping pan-European logistics revolution. Given the country's central location and extensive highway system, many companies in Europe have incorporated one or more French markets into their pan-European distribution networks. France today possesses the biggest inventory of large, modern, and for-lease facilities on the continent, but virtually all of them have been built during the past 10 years. Every country's logistics property markets have their own idiosyncrasies, and the goal of this series of whitepapers is to help you understand their differences as well as their commonalities.

Title: Moving Freight Today: How Shippers Are Creating Greater Capacity, Reliability, and Rate Stability
Length: 12 pages
Summary: Reliable freight transportation is the linchpin of efficient distribution and supply chain networks. While analysts, commentators, and officials rail about concerns - including bottlenecks, soaring freight rates, and the dire need for more capacity in the nation's shipping infrastructure - freight managers are at work keeping freight moving, getting it to its destination on time, and preventing freight bills from going through the roof. Read this whitepaper to learn about the strategies that supply chain professionals have devised to meet these objectives.

Title: The New Retail: Driving Growth Through Product and Supplier Innovation
Length: 16 pages
Summary: The agenda is shifting for retailers. The severe cost-cutting programs of the past decade have given way to strategic private label programs that focus on delivering to the market differentiated products with higher margins. This paper shows retailers how to gain sustainable competitive advantage by leveraging the expertise of their buying and merchandising teams to innovate new products and markets collaboratively with strategic suppliers.

Title: Embrace Technology to Maximize Supply Chain Efficiency; But Beware the Systems Pill
Summary: RF scanning. Automated task interleaving. Pick to light. Electronic commerce. These technology tools can enhance productivity and speed information transfer to create a more efficient supply chain. But without knowledgeable people who clearly understand the business challenges behind these tools, the "systems pill" can have serious side effects. This whitepaper offers advice on how to properly assess technology needs to maximize supply chain efficiency.

Title: Practical Performance Expectations for Smart Packaging
Length: 10 pages
Summary: RFID newcomers share one common expectation: that putting aninexpensive, passive smart label on a box will create accounting nirvana. Reality comes crashing down on them when the first pallet of RFID-equipped cases comes through the dock door and only a handful of labels can be read. This paper addresses initial expectations when dealing with UHF RFID systems in the retail supply chain. First, it looks at realities surrounding read rates and how to address the gaps based on available time and budget. It then details methods for choosing the right tags, and provides practical metrics and test methods to consider. Finally, it offers recommendations for setting realistic RFID expectations.

Title: RFID and the Mainstream Supply Chain - Seven Steps to" RFID Sanity
Summary: Excitement continues to build around RFID, today's hottest technology. Early adopters are realizing significant supply chain improvements, and the technology is rapidly evolving, providing solutions to a wide array of logistics problems. With its increasing popularity, it is important to understand that not all RFID tags are created equal. This paper outlines the keys to applying RFID to supply chain operations, differentiating RFID tags, steps to test tags in unique applications, and ways to derive maximum benefits from the technology.

Title: The ABC's of RFID: Understanding and Using Radio Frequency Identification
Length: 6 pages
Summary: RFID is one of the fastest-growing technologies adopted by businesses today. But while RFID implementations offer value to many industries and applications, misperceptions about its purpose and capabilities can pose obstacles that discourage some organizations from taking advantage of the technology. Intermec's whitepaper provides an overview of RFID technology and capabilities, describes the common frequencies and technologies used in business applications, identifies major standards, and introduces ways to take advantage of RFID to improve convenience, accuracy, safety, and security.

Title: Strategic Sourcing: Building a Foundation for Success
Length: 17 pages
Summary: This whitepaper discusses the differences between sourcing and strategic sourcing, and the profound impact strategic sourcing can have on a company's financial health. While cost reduction is typically a primary goal, strategic sourcing initiatives can go beyond influencing purchasing and procurement processes. Strategic sourcing helps companies achieve operational improvements and supports an organization's near- and long-term objectives.

Title: The Value of Returns Visibility
Length: 6 pages
Summary: In today's competitive retail environment, business as usual doesn't exist. As retailers search for ways to build their customer base, create new revenue streams, and reduce costs, market leaders cannot afford any missteps due to "blind spots" in the supply chain. There is simply too much at stake. This whitepaper focuses on the value of visibility in the reverse supply chain. Unlike the forward supply chain, which has vastly improved over the last 10 years, the reverse chain often remains a reactive business process, due to retailers' inability to "see" into the return supply chain.

Title: Inbound Transportation Management and Control: Low-Hanging Fruit and How to Grab It
Summary: As the supply chain becomes more refined and integrated, supply chain management has an even greater impact on the bottom line. Every dollar allocated to transportation and materials management must be ultra-efficient. When it comes to managing a transportation program, the overriding theme is control, yet many organizations have not applied the same efforts to inbound transportation management as they have to outbound management. This whitepaper identifies and discusses important steps to improve inbound transportation management and outlines the efficiencies and cost savings this improvement can yield.

Title: The Dozen Deadliest Mistakes of CRM Users
Summary: Ever since Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was introduced, its Holy Grail has been to create an effective, efficient system to get the right product to the right customer at the right time. What makes this so hard to achieve? Read this whitepaper to find out the dozen deadliest mistakes that can ruin even the best-intentioned CRM programs.

Title: A Practical Guide to Supply Chain Network Design
Length: 16 pages
Summary: With any supply chain design project, the stakes are high. Today's decisions will impact a company's supply chain performance for years to come. The strategic and business opportunities are often enormous, as typical supply chain design projects identify potential savings ranging from five to 15 percent of the costs being analyzed. For some companies, competitive and financial survival may even depend on their ability to redesign their supply chain networks. This whitepaper draws from the authors' collective experience to offer real-world examples of successful supply chain redesigns.

Title: The Three Pillars of Effective Returns Management: How Visibility, Automation, and Reconciliation Can Maximize Value Recovery
Length: 9 pages
Summary: The sale of a product to a customer does not represent the end of a product's life. Its termination point extends well beyond. But too many organizations today have yet to implement programs to maximize value from assets in the latter stages of the lifecycle. This oversight leads to lower value recovery and excessive administrative costs. Learn about the three key value drivers for managing returns in this whitepaper. Additionally, it covers specific ways to design and implement several mechanisms that access this value potential.

Title: 21st-Century Leadership: How We Can Become Better Supply Chain Management Leaders
Length: 9 pages
Summary: Creating world-class supply chain management organizations starts at the top - it all begins with leaders. This whitepaper explains why today's leaders need a clear understanding of the importance of the supply chain and how it must be interwoven into an overall business plan.

Title: Making Supply Chain Risk Management Part of Your Core Management Process
Length: 14 pages
Summary: Uncertainty and rapid change in the business environment create gaps between what companies plan for and their actual business requirements. These gaps leave all aspects of a company 's performance exposed to the outcome of costly and inefficient efforts at fire-fighting and damage control. To close this critical gap in planning, performance, and accountability, effective managers adopt proactive risk management measures. Find out in this paper how factoring in key sources of uncertainty can not only help businesses gain visibility to and control over these risks, but also drive better coordination, alignment, and accountability.

Title: Production Schizophrenia
Length: 14 pages
Summary: Consumer loyalty in today's marketplace is questionable. The smallest imperfection can cause a product to fall out of favor, and consumers can always find a replacement to take the place of a once-loved favorite. With considerable choice and the introduction of low-cost, basic products with high quality, the marketplace is a competitive and ever-changing environment requiring constant improvements and innovation with consistent quality and traceability. This whitepaper examines the increasing pressures - legislation, quality, batch control and the effects of high staff turnover - on operations managers. It provides some tips for solving and addressing these issues.

Title: Selecting a 3PL Solution: Things to Look For, Questions to Ask
Length: 13 pages
Summary: Not all warehouse management systems equip businesses with the versatility and depth to deal effectively with the challenges and circumstances intrinsic to business. Basic warehouse management systems provide the essentials and little more. Why should that be when businesses have been manufacturing, storing, and shipping products of all kinds for centuries? This paper addresses the challenges and concerns potential outsourcers should consider when seeking a third-party solution and provider.

Title: Product Profitability: How to Perfect SKU Rationalization
Length: 7 pages
Summary: Effective product management is not only about getting the right products to the right customers profitably; it is also about making sure you don't have what you don't need. Optimizing product mix becomes increasingly complex in a world of fast development cycles, short product lives, diverse customer segments, a myriad of channels, and intense global competition. By laying out a specific methodology, this whitepaper helps you better understand how your organization can increase profits, and where money is seeping down the drain.

Title: Warehouse Without Walls
Length: 8 pages
Summary: Supply chain managers are looking at new ways to control product movement and improve velocity at consolidation points, satellite facilities, and supplier warehouses, with the aid of technology and service providers. Ultimately, the world has become a warehouse - one without walls. This survey illustrates how best-in-class companies can adapt their distribution networks and rapidly assemble or reassemble supply chain services to meet specific needs.