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supplychain is the tag associated with every aspect of Supply Chain Management, Planning, Technology, Logistics, Procurement, and more.
What comes to mind when you hear the word “synchronize?”
Do you think of a watch, with all its gears turning underneath the surface? Music? Your favorite sports team?
Do you think of your business’s supply chain?
If not, that might be a problem for you.
Continue reading “How to Synchronize Your Supply Chain!”I’ve told this story many times, and still get laughs out of it every time I do. One time, as I was having lunch with a relatively new associate, he asked what I did for a living. I told him I was a farmer.
Now after he spit his food out and laughed insatiably for a few minutes, I explained to him what I meant.
Continue reading “Be a Farmer … of People!”The capability we had in E-Commerce order fulfillment was rather basic. We had employees manually pushing carts up and down standard warehouse racking aisles picking goods off of shelves. And when they had completed an order or a set of orders they would then push the entire cart back to a centralized order packing station.
As a Supply Chain Services company we needed a dramatically better capability if we were wanted to have customers trust their growing E-Commerce business with us. Pushing carts around a warehouse is both inefficient and lacks innovation.
We had to go back to the drawing board. But in doing so we would end up with a World Class solution!
Continue reading “From Click to Ship in 4 Minutes! Ultimate Principles for World Class Fulfillment!”The fast growing E-Commerce channel makes it an attractive avenue for most companies to participate in. The tremendous amount of investment required to participate in online product sales requires explicit decision making as to how a company is going to fulfill those orders. You need a warehouse design strategy to provide your fulfillment solution.
The E-Commerce Fulfillment solution you choose must take into account your customer’s demands, your competitive pressures, and the financial constraints that most companies have to deal with.
Continue reading “To DC Or Not To DC? That is the Warehouse Design Question!”Understanding your Customer is the first and most important consideration in designing, defining and refining your company and your go to market business model. And millennials are different.
In the Retail sector one key demographic that demands consideration is that group called Millennials. Whether it be Marketing, Merchandising, Supply Chain, or any other aspect of your Go to Market experience understanding what is important to Millennials is critically important.
Continue reading “Why Millennials are Different and How Marketers can Engage Them!”What is the difference between Logistics and Distribution?
On the surface some people may consider them synonymous. Without consulting a dictionary both Logistics and Distribution suggest imagery involving the movement of goods.
But to anyone who works in Supply Chain, in particular with a title including either the term Logistics or Distribution, or if you work in a Distribution Centre or for a Logistics company, then there are distinct differences between these words.
But are there also commonalities?
Continue reading “What’s the Difference Between Logistics and Distribution?”Everyone knows that the demographics of the Supply Chain industry are changing, and Supply Chain is becoming younger. They have to. Within a few years, demographers estimate that 400,000 baby boomers will be retiring in Canada every year.
Within the Supply Chain industry, the looming – and in fact, already-started – retirement of baby boomers and shifting job responsibilities brought about by technology are creating a talent crisis.
Continue reading “Supply Chain is Becoming Younger, More Educated, More Diverse!”The Supply Chain function within your company has many responsibilities. From planning to negotiating to buying, from moving goods to processing goods, and from managing data to managing inventory. These responsibilities are at the core of making your company run. But is Supply Chain a Cost Centre or a Value Creator?
Yet often the Supply Chain is undervalued. While every function must help your company grow and prosper when the heat is on uninformed Executives can view Supply Chain as merely a Cost Centre. As such there can be unrelenting pressure to continue to cut costs.
Why is Supply Chain often undervalued? And how do you increase the value of Supply Chain in the eyes of your Executives and other functions?
Continue reading “Is Your Supply Chain A Cost Centre or a Value Creator?”Hurricanes! Earthquakes! Terrorist Attacks! Train Derailments! War! Fire! Cyber Attacks! Every one is a disaster.
You see it in the news every minute of every hour of every day. Either some natural disaster or some man made despicable act has occurred somewhere on the planet. The result is death, destruction and disruption.
Everyone is trying to pick up the pieces. They are trying to figure out what has happened, how to come to grips with the catastrophic results, and how to get things going again.
Depending on what the disaster is people can be struggling to know where they can get the basics such as food, water and shelter.
This is where the Supply Chain must kick in to gear: business continuity and disaster recovery.
Continue reading “Disaster Strikes!!! Is Your Supply Chain Ready To Recover?”Big news out of the grocery retail world as Amazon has announced its acquisition of major organic foods retailer Whole Foods Market – for an eye-popping $13.7 billion sale price that doesn’t look so massive given Amazon’s $136 billion sales volume in 2016.
Analysts across the retail industry are talking about the huge implications of this sale for a retail industry that many say is in the middle of a major meltdown, in part owing to Amazon’s massive growth in the eCommerce space. This foray into the grocery business is a big challenge to companies like Target, Wal-Mart, and others, and also a sign that reports of brick and mortar retail’s demise might be greatly exaggerated.
Continue reading “What are the Supply Chain Impacts of Amazon’s Whole Foods Acquisition?”The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in E-Commerce is underway. Further it has the potential for exponential dissemination across the Retail landscape in the future along with expansion of it’s applications and capabilities.
From playing a role in managing the Customer Experience to providing Buying, Replenishment and Fulfillment capabilities to analyzing the ever growing expanse of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay in Retail.
Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence in E-Commerce! (Infographic)”For busy executives, being active on social media and leveraging social media tips is kind of like networking. It’s one of those things that everyone says you absolutely have to do to benefit your career, but it’s hard to make it part of your daily routine.
Let’s be honest: it’s even harder for those who came of age before social media became ubiquitous. It can be tough to pin down what channels you should be on, what you should be posting, and the specific ways that a strong social media presence will bolster your career.
Continue reading “Social Media Tips for Supply Chain Leaders!”Supply chain collaboration is a hot topic today and no wonder: companies that collaborate effectively across the supply chain have enjoyed dramatic reductions in inventories and costs, together with improvements in speed, service levels, and customer satisfaction.
Supplier chain collaboration itself isn’t new. What’s new is that it’s taken on a much greater urgency and importance.
Continue reading “Supply Chain Collaboration – The New Way to Drive Value!”
The Supply Chain team was generally viewed as lacking in skill and capability by those outside the organization. Customers and other internal functions viewed Supply Chain as a dysfunctional organization as evidenced by the poor Supply Chain performance metrics. And external benchmarking placed our Supply Chain last amongst our competitors. Going to infinity and beyond was a tall task to say the least.
Inside the Supply Chain organization there were a lot of very smart people. But there was no trust, teamwork or synergy. The culture was one more of complacency than of trend setting. And there was a lack of inspired leadership.
Something had to change!
Continue reading “To Infinity and Beyond! Ultimate Principles for Creating a World Class Team!”Gartner recently announced their Top 25 Supply Chains List. I always find it interesting to see the list, to see who came out on top, and to hear what their views are on prevailing trends.
But as I review the list, compare it to prior years, and consider the scoring methodology I do wonder whether the list in its current form continues to be relevant for identifying the best of the Supply Chain.
Continue reading “Gartner Top 25 Supply Chain List! Is it Relevant?”
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