Understanding can take a long time. A recent survey of about 400 companies in America, conducted through Supply Chain Digest, indicates that Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) remains ‘a fairly immature process in the majority of companies’. And this is more than 30 years after the concept was first described! Why is it that a process designed to overcome a … Read More
What you don’t know can affect your business
The going on in metals. We assume the spot and future price of commodities are established on trading exchanges through an open market that prices the imbalance between supply and demand. True, but events can influence perceptions and therefore the price. For example, events can be short term, where traders think that a disturbance (man made or natural) in countries … Read More
The risk of service suppliers
Services are growing. A recent news article concerned a real estate agency supplying services to a telecommunications company. The work was to represent the telecom company in selling surplus property. Nothing surprising about the arrangement, except that the head of property investment at the telecom is involved in a business venture with the head of the real estate firm. So, … Read More
Big data is not good information
Lots of data. In keeping with the consumer space of social media and apps in the cloud, the IT industry is pushing the benefits of instant data (called big data) as one of the new ‘big things’ for industry (the other appears to be cloud computing). To emphasise the point, a coffee shop chain in the UK has stated that … Read More
Don’t get sick about your sea freight
Forecasts and truth. Your business depends on plans developed from forecasts; these inform logisticians of the future. Unfortunately, there are probabilities, uncertainties and associated risks, so the forecasts will be wrong; but they ensure your business is less wrong than if you did nothing. As an example, in my Newsletter for June 2013 (go to www.learnaboutlogistics.com to subscribe), I discussed forecasts … Read More