Daily Insights, Trends and Solutions for Professionals, Experts, Students and Society
supplychain is the tag associated with every aspect of Supply Chain Management, Planning, Technology, Logistics, Procurement, and more.
At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action™” Interview series. This interview is with Sandra Ketchen.
Continue reading “Seasoned Leadership in Action™! An Interview with Sandra Ketchen!”At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action™” Interview series at Supply Chain Game Changer.This interview is with Leonard Han.
I have had the tremendous opportunity of working with Leonard at ModusLink. He is truly a seasoned leader having run businesses across Asia.
Leonard very easily deals with people across all countries and cultures. He is very pragmatic and knows how to get things done to meet all business and customer challenges while at the same time earning the respect of all those who deal with him.
Continue reading “Seasoned Leadership in Action™! An Interview with Leonard Han, Freelance Consultant!”As consumers the complexity in the retail supply chain is usually oblivious to us. We go to the store and pick up the goods that we want. Or we order goods online from our devices at home, in the office, or anywhere for that matter. We consume the items, returning them if necessary, unaware of all of the work that went into making those goods available to us.
A phenomenal amount of activity goes on behind the scenes to make this experience as seamless as possible. I am not saying that it always goes smoothly. Sometimes items are broken. They are late. Or there is some other issue.
But behind the curtain that is Retail there are a lot of people managing a lot of processes and dealing with a lot of complexity earnestly trying to make your goods available to you.
Continue reading “Complexity in the Retail Supply Chain!”Brands labeled as having a Green Supply Chain have started becoming synonymous with sustainability, trustworthiness, quality and forward thinking.
For this very reason, companies globally are frantically climbing to the tallest of buildings to shout out their dedication to supply chain sustainability, and describe the sustainable actions that will follow ‘according to their 2020 initiatives’.
I don’t mean to come off snarky, but there is a clear-cut discourse that has formed between brands actualizing supply chain sustainability, and those who are marketing supply chain sustainability.
Continue reading “The Green Supply Chain: True Sustainability or Just a Marketing Stunt?”
At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action™” Interview series at Supply Chain Game Changer. This interview is with Scott Cleaver, Chief Operations Officer at ecobee.
Continue reading “Seasoned Leadership in Action™ – An Interview with Scott Cleaver, COO at ecobee!”This week saw one of the year’s most highly-anticipated releases in the Supply Chain industry: the Institute of Supply Management (ISM)’s annual salary and compensation survey.
As a recruitment company specializing in the industry, we consider it part of our mandate to spread the word about salaries in the field – and educate ourselves even further in the process.
Continue reading “Supply Chain Compensation is on the Rise!”
Over the course of a long career I have worked with and for many, many people. As I reflect on the bosses I have had it is easy to create a list of those I considered to be good bosses and those I considered to be bad bosses.
But I have also always felt that you can, and should, learn from everyone. Whether you consider that they are good, bad or indifferent there are behaviours and qualities that you can see in every person.
Everyone can share similar stories, again both good and bad. It’s how you react, adapt, adopt, avoid, change, and deal with these behaviours that is important.
Continue reading “Lessons from Bad Bosses!”
At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action” Interview series at Supply Chain Game Changer. This interview is with Neil Hampshire.
When I joined ModusLink I needed to hire a new CIO. I didn’t want a CIO to just run the I/T backroom making sure that all of the systems and computers were up and running. I wanted a CIO that was going to be a Game Changer!
Continue reading “Seasoned Leadership in Action™! An Interview with Neil Hampshire, CITO at Parallel!”Businesses have long since entered the E-Commerce marketplace. But how do you physically fulfill all of those online orders?The age of technology and innovation has made E-Commerce order fulfillment business processes and solutions so readily available that it has become highly competitive.
This competition is especially apparent in the area of E-Commerce Third-Party Logistics (3PLs).
Continue reading “5 E-Commerce Order Fulfillment Choices! (Infographic)”Aggregating your procurement spend for the purpose of delivering greater value is a sound objective. Theoretically you should be able to generate better service, better terms and conditions, and better cost. Therefore you should enable spend aggregation.
Yet there can be many obstacles in your way to achieving this seemingly simple goal. Loss of control, fear of job loss, questionable benefits, and a perceived loss of margin are some of the obstacles you may run across. We discussed these in greater detail in our post Procurement (Part 1!) – The Spend Aggregation Obstacle Course!
Continue reading “Enable Spend Aggregation in Procurement!”Believe it or not, Industry 4.0 — the latest specialization for modern factories and manufacturing plants — does factor into design and and help optimize your factory layout. That is because digitization, or the current movement to connect and bring all equipment into modern times, absolutely influences design.
In essence, that is the heart of Industry 4.0, a complete synergy between operations, equipment, properties and, of course, the people who spend their time there. If 3.0 was about automation and boosting efficiency, this generation is about injecting the human touch back into the work environment, and that means accommodating such things from a design standpoint.
Continue reading “How to Optimize Your Factory for Industry 4.0!”
A High Performance Organization is one in which there is tremendous alignment among and commitment by the team members. And as a result this motivated team is able to achieve superior results. The level of collaboration and innovation they demonstrate is remarkable. But what are the ground rules?
There are many characteristics of the culture which allows such teams to be high performing. And when they set out to drive change and make improvements it is those cultural characteristics which allow them to succeed.
Continue reading “Ground Rules for Creating a High Performance Organization (HPO)!”How can you tell if your Supply Chain is broken? Do you need a Supply Chain Detective?
Certainly there can be obvious clues: your CEO starts firing and hiring people, consultants are brought in, customers start leaving, or operating and financial performance suffers.
But before the situation gets to those extremes what are the clues that your Supply Chain is not working as well as it could, or should?
Supply Chain effectiveness is absolutely critical for companies in most industries to survive, let alone succeed. And even if your company seems successful now that is no guarantee that it will be in the future.
So detecting those clues and solving these problems is of paramount importance.
Continue reading “The Supply Chain Detective ™! In Search of Broken Supply Chain Clues!”From The Terminator to Blade Runner, pop culture has always leaned towards a chilling depiction of artificial intelligence (AI) and our future with AI at the helm. Recent headlines about Facebook panicking because their AI bots developed a language of their own have us hitting the alarm button once again. Should we really feel unsettled with an AI future?
News flash: that future is here. If you ask Siri, the helpful assistant who magically lives inside your phone, to read text messages and emails to you, find the nearest pizza place or call your mother for you, then you’ve made AI a part of your everyday life.
Continue reading “How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Change Decision Making!”As to Supply Chain predictions, in the book The Living Supply Chain, the authors argue that, “Speeding up the supply chain is at the root of everything that is good: improved revenue, reduced working capital, higher profitability, and less obsolete inventory. Conversely, slowing down the supply chain is at the root of everything that is bad: working capital write-offs, reduced profitability, and slowing revenues.”
To “speed” up the supply chain is to invest in change and change will come with the digital transformation of the supply chain, which is the major focus for executives in the future.
Continue reading “Supply Chain Predictions!”
