Articles
The Lean Supply Chain
Autonomous at Last?
One of the most difficult and expensive areas of the supply chain is last-mile and home delivery. It can also be the most memorable and important aspect of the customer’s buying experience. So, it’s no surprise that last-mile delivery of goods is a key application for driverless technologies.
Read MoreJust In Time to Near-Source or Nearly Time to In-Source?
As the global economy grows more complex, the concepts of in-sourcing and near-sourcing are receiving increased attention from many supply chain professionals.
Read MoreThe Supply Chain: It’s Alive! It’s Alive!
In some ways, the supply chain of today is a living, breathing organism. It’s not just links and nodes on a map, but a blend of digital and/or analog data, machines, and yes, real people who are constantly moving and adapting.
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The Future of the Supply Chain is Cloudy
We hear a lot about the cloud these days. The cloud (public or private) refers to software and services that run on the Internet instead of locally on your computer. There is a good chance that the majority of business data will eventually reside in the cloud.
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Building The Smart Supply Chain
With more objects embedded with sensors, and better communication, decision-making and automation capabilities, traditional supply chains are becoming more intelligent. The new “smart” supply chain presents huge opportunities for reducing costs and improving efficiency. Some refer to this concept as Supply Chain 4.0: the application of the Internet of Things (IoT), advanced robotics, and big […]
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Lean Isn’t Mean and Agile Isn’t Cheap
Back in 2014, I wrote a column extolling the benefits of a lean and agile supply chain, also known as a hybrid strategy. Depending on your product or service, your supply chain may tilt more one way or the other, or it might be segmented but still exhibit characteristics of both. For example, if you […]
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S&OP: Bringing the Outside In
Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is an integrated business management process through which the leadership team continually achieves focus, alignment and synchronization among all functions. This ensures that supply meets demand while the organization meets general business objectives, including profitability, productivity, competitive customer lead times, and others.
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Supply-Side Accuracy and Timeliness in Volatile Times
While improved demand accuracy in your supply chain is critical, it is equally important to have supply-side accuracy and timeliness, especially now. The disruption the pandemic caused for global supply chains is getting worse, creating shortages of consumer products and making it more expensive for companies to ship goods where they’re needed.
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Demand Accuracy In Your Supply Chain
During the pandemic, a lot of the focus on supply chain tended to be on the supply side, and rightly so, due to the highly publicized sourcing, production, distribution, and transportation issues. As a result, organizations continue to look to increase productivity, flexibility, and agility through programs such as Lean, increased automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, and others.
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Omnichannel Delivers, But at What Cost?
Amazon, the most successful e-commerce company of all, gained a competitive advantage through its two-day free delivery for Prime customers. Many other pure e-tailers and brick-and-mortar retailers moving to omnichannel retail—where customers engage with companies in a variety of ways, including in a physical store, or via websites and mobile apps—have followed suit to some degree.
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