Self-Storage Has Become Big Business! (Infographic)

While immensely popular in the United States, self-storage solutions have remained pretty uncommon throughout Europe… that is, until now.

More and more entrepreneurs are recognising the untapped opportunity presented by the storage industry and as a result we are seeing a major increase in the availability of facilities in Europe.

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Lean in the Back Office … Why is it so difficult?

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Implementing a Lean program on the Manufacturing floor, in a Warehouse operation, or in a Distribution Centre is challenging enough.  There are a series of process steps in which materials are transformed or moved in some fashion.  Try implementing Lean in the Back Office.

And your Lean program has at its core the objective of making these operations as efficient as possible. But when you try to apply these same Lean principles to the support organizations, or the back office, you are likely to experience a wide range of reactions.

So why is it so difficult to implement, and sustain, a Lean program in the Back Office of your organization?

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Keys to Success in Warehouse Management/Order Fulfillment! (Video)

E-Commerce continues to be the fastest growing sales channel anywhere in the world.  E-Commerce globally has been growing at over 20% per year and will continue to grow at that rate for the next several years.  (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/288487/forecast-of-global-b2c-e-commerce-growt/  )

With these ever-increasing order volumes and changes in online shopper expectations there is enormous pressure on E-Commerce company Supply Chain distribution and fulfillment operations.

What are the keys for E-Commerce companies to be successful in fulfilling all of these orders and demands from online consumers?

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Anatomy of the Perfect Unboxing Experience! (Infographic)

In today’s eCommerce landscape, the majority of customers interact with you only two times, once when they make a purchase on your website and then again when the product is delivered. Improving your website’s conversion rate is very important and gains a lot of attention in the eCommerce industry, while the anatomy of the unboxing experience is too often overlooked.

As the marketplace for physical products continues to transition online, the customer experiences far less interaction with the actual company. These lost opportunities for a business to impress through exemplary service will need to be compensated for in other ways.

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Do You Want Inventory Turnover Breakthrough? Define and Manage The Levers!

Taking a holistic approach in order to achieve Inventory Turnover Breakthrough results meant that I needed to consider the End To End Supply Chain.  As I thought through this approach there was really no other way if we were to achieve significant improvements to help the entire business in a short period of time.

In thinking about the End To End Supply Chain it was necessary to define all of the aspects that impact Inventory levels.   In short I needed to be able to manage:

  • All of the levers that control the rate at which Inventory is brought in to the company
  • All of the levers that control the rate at which Inventory moves through the company
  • And all of the levers that control the rate at which Inventory moves out of the company
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An Acquisition Gone Wrong! A Coup D’Etat in the Boardroom!

The CEO called an emergency meeting in the Boardroom.  The President of our Division, myself, the prior owners of a company we had just acquired, and one of our major shareholders/board members were to attend.  The sh*t had hit the fan with our latest acquisition.

It had only been a few months since the acquisition had been completed.  This was certainly long enough for the honeymoon period to be over.  But now it looked like we were quickly heading for a divorce.

What went wrong?

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Supply Chain Innovation: The Path to Success!

Supply Chain innovation is a team effort requiring collaboration and buy-in from all levels within an organization, and it’s especially true when it comes to bringing innovation to the supply chain.

While new and buzzworthy technologies like drones and robotics are consistently being introduced, innovation for the supply chain is truly a continuum of small improvements that make a greater impact – whether it’s improving processes or the overarching business model.

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Blockchain Continues to Make its Way into the Supply Chain World!

A few months back, we wrote about how Blockchain continues as an emerging technology and tool for Supply Chain transparency.

It’s a pretty incredible technology that stands to reshape big aspects of the economy in general and Supply Chain in particular – but it’s also pretty difficult for the common person to understand, which doesn’t help matters.

But Blockchain is coming, and it offers the potential to shake up Supply Chain and Logistics like few other technologies coming down the pike.

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Value Stream Mapping the Future State Process!

Unchaining Change Leadership

We had completed value stream mapping the current state processes across some very significant business processes in the company.  It took a fair amount of time even though we had the active involvement of subject matter experts and leaders from every functional organization.

When all was said and done the current state involved hundreds of process steps, almost 200 pain points, and dozens of iterative, repetitive loops.  The company was just being introduced to Lean process improvement techniques.  And as challenging as it was to reach a common understanding of what the current processes were the difficult part was about to start.

How were we going to define and map the Future State process?

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Characteristics of a Barrier Busting Culture!

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When you embark on driving any kind of Game Changing Transformation you will most likely also need to change the Culture.  As the saying goes, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results”.  So in order to get different results you may have to break through barriers and drive different behaviours from what are inherent in your current Culture.

Your organization is an ecosystem of policies, practices, processes and procedures that are the result of decisions, beliefs and  behaviours.  Over time much of this generally gets accepted as the way it’s always been done and is not open to challenge or to change.  Therein sacred cows, whether real or perceived, can become obstacles to making the changes needed to derive different results from the status quo.

So how do you change your Culture to achieve Game Changing results?

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The Control Tower – Is Yours Real or Smoke and Mirrors?

The advancement of digital technology enables the real-time, intelligent management of the Supply Chain.  This now means you need a Control Tower.

But any company’s Supply Chain can still involve tens of thousands of skus, thousands of bills of material, thousands of suppliers, hundreds of transportation vendors, dozens of manufacturing facilities and distribution centres, and numerous customers.

So even if you have a Digital Supply Chain how do you manage this complexity?  The answer is that you need a Control Tower!

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6 Trends to Make Supply Chain Managers the Heroes of Their Company!

Supply chain leaders and heroes will face the year with uncertainty and opportunity. Digital technologies are becoming more prevalent in basic supply chain functions, and changes in legislation are likely to spur dramatic changes that will result in the need to reevaluate supply chain strategy in both domestic and international locations.  How can they be Supply Chain heroes?

Similar to the supply chain maturity curve of technologies, as explained by Steve Banker of Forbes, supply chain managers should consider how top supply chain trends will influence operations in the coming year.

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The Amazing Supply Chain of Your Morning Coffee!

Even though modern coffee machines offer an attractive variety of caffeinated drinks like cappuccino or latte macchiato, for me it is a simple cup of black coffee that helps kick-start my productivity when the clock strikes 8 am.

This “kick-start”, or boost aspect of coffee was randomly discovered between the sixth and the ninth century. A widespread tale sets the scene in the kingdom of Kaffa, in Abyssinia – which today is Ethiopia – where a shepherd one day observed that his sheep were unusually cheerful after eating white blossoms and red cherries from a previously unknown plant.

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Breaking your Supply Chain Traffic Jam!

Does anyone like being stuck in a Traffic Jam?

Prior to one Holiday season several years ago the volume that was coming into the Distribution Centre receiving area was unprecedented and unpredicted.   We were out of room on the docks and we were out of storage space but trucks kept on coming.  And we were still weeks away from being able to ship product to stores to relieve the pressure.

We were gridlocked.  We kept inching our way along but we were very, very close to having this traffic jam of activity shut us down.

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The Supply Chain Carbon Footprint Reduction Strategy! (Infographic)

Unchaining Change Leadership

When I was 11 years old everyone in Grade 6 was required to create and make a speech in front of the class.  I wrote a speech on Air Pollution.  It was an emerging issue in the news at that time.  I talked about statistics on the levels of Air Pollution, the damage it was causing, and what we needed to do to curtail and fix the problem.  This was long before I had heard the words Supply Chain Carbon Footprint.

I ended up winning the local and regional public speaking competitions with that speech.  I didn’t actually end up doing much about Air Pollution beyond helping to promote awareness of the issue with my speech.  But it did plant the idea in my mind that we all had a responsibility to  create awareness and help protect our environment in whatever manner that we could.

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