Logistics Archives - Page 9 of 10 - Supply Chain Game Changer™

Part Shortages? What is your Supply Line Strategy?

On Time Delivery – Get that right First!

Have you experienced part shortages that gate your production schedule?

Part shortages can be highly frustrating issues to deal with. They almost always happen within the standard lead time of the components you need. And very often they can stop production immediately.

Everyone wants the shortage resolved immediately. From your Customer to your CEO through to the entire Management chain and everyone in Production … they all want the needed parts NOW!

But there are many reasons why part shortages occur. And there are many actions that can be taken to mitigate their occurrence. You don’t have to live with shortages every day if you have a Supply Line strategy.

A “Don’t Touch” Strategy will Dramatically Lean out your Supply Chain!

10 Signs You Should Reboot Your Lean Program!

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The box I was looking at in the Pick-To-Light (PTL) lane was full of at least 1-2 dozen different skus with as many as one to twenty of each sku in the box. It looked like the insides of a piñata in there. Although a piñata is used in celebrations I was quite sure that when the retail store opened the box they wouldn’t be celebrating.

All along the PTL conveyor every box looked like an explosion of different skus in different quantities. At every station an employee was following the lights and picking a different quantity of each sku from one set of boxes and putting them in the “piñata” box.

I knew that this was the way it had historically been done, and the company had just spent millions and millions of dollars automating this historic process, but from a Lean perspective the whole approach was wasteful, slow, and expensive.

Was it really necessary to touch every single piece of every single sku multiple times?

How AI and the IoT Can Change Transportation Management!

The Top 5 Impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Logistics!

Analysts predict that by 2020, 75% of new cars will feature IoT connectivity. The percentage increase describes consumer applications, but the idea of connected vehicles should garner interest from other sectors such as shipping, logistics, and transportation management.

Leaders in these industries would be wise to plan for a future where AI and the IoT transform transportation management.

Here are five possible applications to consider:

The Current State of the Shipping Capacity Crunch!

Truck Drivers – Unsung Heroes of the Supply Chain! (Infographic)

The shipping capacity crunch is not a new topic, but the end of 2017 is shaping up to reveal an unprecedented crunch, reports Chris Brady of Logistics Viewpoints.

An active hurricane season, the forthcoming implementation deadline for electronic logging devices (ELD) and record-shattering projections for the upcoming holiday shipping season reflect some of the top factors affecting the current state shipping capacity crunch.

Moreover, according to Dustin Braden of the Journal of Commerce (JOC), the driver shortage is worsening in tandem. To successfully mitigate the potential setbacks from the shipping capacity crunch, your organization must understand more about its current and projected driving forces.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCaaS)!

Preparing Business for the Digital Supply Chain! Oracle Interviews Mike Mortson!

I began my career working in a manufacturing plant within an international company that was completely vertically integrated. From component manufacturing through to subassembly manufacturing and end product assembly they did it all.

Within 10 years the company experienced a number of site closures and declared that manufacturing was no longer a core competency. For the site that I was a part of this meant that closure was an inevitability.

Faced with this stark reality we made the choice to spin off from the parent organization and start our own new company, entering the world of Contract Manufacturing.

This was my first experience with Outsourcing, or what I refer to as “Supply Chain as a Service” (SCaaS).

Seasoned Leadership in Action ™ – Our 2018 All Star Leaders!

In 2018 Supply Chain Game Changer introduced our Seasoned Leadership in Action ™ interview series.

There are so many fantastic people leading in Business and in Supply Chain. We thought that it would be great to learn a little more about what makes these people tick, what is important to them, and what we can all learn from them.

The Interview series has proven to be phenomenally popular with our readers with many of these Interviews being amongst our most viewed articles of all time. So we thought that it would be great to recap all of the Interviews we published in 2018.

Finally we extend our thanks to all of those who participated in our Seasoned Leadership in Action™ Interview series. You were quite simply great for which we are truly grateful!

What Exactly Is Supply Chain Management? 10 Different Definitions!

What Exactly Is Procurement? And What is Purchasing?

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When I began my career there was no such thing as “Supply Chain Management“. Supply Chain was not a title to be found anywhere on any organization chart.

Yet all of the functions that we now associate with Supply Chain have been around for a very long time: Planning, Inventory Management, Logistics, Procurement and Purchasing, Warehousing and many more.

So what exactly is the definition of “Supply Chain Management”? Interestingly there are many views on how to define Supply Chain.

Truck Drivers are a Vital Part of the Supply Chain!

Truck Drivers – Unsung Heroes of the Supply Chain! (Infographic)

Take a quick look around your home or office and you’d be hard-pressed to find a product that has not seen the inside of a truck or delivered by truck drivers at some point in its existence.

In truth, many aspects of everyday life are made possible through the supply chain industry, with trucking alone responsible for 70% of America’s freight volume by weight. This is achieved through the hard work of truck drivers, the unsung heroes of the industry, who travel 430 billion miles per year hauling 10 billion tons of goods that people all need to live.

The Hottest Supply Chain Jobs! (Infographic)

Supply Chain Compensation is on the Rise!

It’s an exciting time to be involved in the Supply Chain and for Supply Chain jobs. Across every industry, every geography and every country there are advances in Technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain and more.

But none of this can function without Supply Chain professionals. Your expertise and experience are the backbone of developing the strategies and action plans for making these evolutionary and revolutionary improvements .

The Amazing Supply Chain of Chocolate Easter Eggs

The Baby Supply Chain!

At the end of this month, the festival of Easter will begin. Aside from the religious connotations, many people automatically associate Easter with the legend of the Easter bunny delivering chocolate Easter eggs to children. I, for one, am a big chocolate lover, so I am fascinated by this amazing supply chain.

Originally, eggs were included in ancient pagan practices and these have, to some degree, been adapted to create some Christian Easter traditions with the egg symbolizing new life. Chocolate Easter eggs are more of a modern tradition and somewhat of a substitute for the former custom of decorating Easter eggs by dyeing and painting chicken eggs in bright colors using vegetable dye or charcoal.

What is a Multichannel Distribution Management System?

Which is Better? Amazon FBA or 3PL?

Many businesses begin with single-channel distribution. That sole channel could be a brick-and-mortar store or an e-commerce website. In either case, all sales flow through one outlet.

The advantage of a single-channel distribution management system is simplicity. There’s only one channel to manage, one channel to stock, and one channel to market to customers. As a business expands, however, the single-channel model can limit growth.

Supply Chain Investment Challenges – Real and Imagined!

The Digital Supply Chain Road is Full of Potholes, Construction and Accidents!

Everywhere you turn there is talk of a lot of very exciting technologies requiring Supply Chain investment. The Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), Drones and Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Analytics are front and centre.

And all of these technologies have applicability for the Supply Chain in every business and in every industry around the world. The Digital Supply Chain vision is within our line of sight.

But most companies are still working with the same, manual, non-automated Supply Chains that they have had for at least the last decade. And they will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. They are faced with challenges which are going to impede technology investments to advance their Supply Chains going forward.

What are these Supply Chain challenges?

Our 2020 Top 10 List!

As we continue on in our 4th year here at Supply Chain Game Changer we have realized some exciting milestones.

We have exceeded 3 million views across the Website, LinkedIn and Twitter. We have had over 100 guest contributors to our site supporting our goal of sharing experiences and expertise. And we have now published over 500 articles since our inception.

Continuing in our tradition of years past we present here our Top 10 articles for the first half of 2020. As everyone knows the globe has been immersed in all things related to and impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic. We’ve written several articles with respect to the pandemic and the associated impacts on the Supply Chain, some of which are reproduced here.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Here’s our list of our Top 10 articles of 2020, so far:

Introducing Lean In Retail … Start in the Backroom!

The Agile Supply Chain! Why Agility is Trumping Lean!

The Retail company I had just joined was undergoing a massive transformation. Fundamentally the new merchandising strategy was to curate a dramatically different set of products from that which was carried historically, but in addition to what was carried historically. What did this mean for the backroom in every store?

This meant that an enormous number of the business processes had to be transformed to support the new product set because management of the new merchandise required much different capabilities in all aspects of running a retail company. Not only did this transformation require new capabilities but it also required improvements to productivity and efficiency throughout the company. And overall this meant a need for cultural change.

I decided that I would introduce Lean process improvement techniques to this company.