Category Archive

The business case for investment. The question “what is the need?”, has been front of mind while recently reading articles and reports concerning new technologies and their possible effects on business in general and supply chains in particular. All the articles seemed to assume that justifying the expenditure on new technologies is not a problem. However, buying technologies (new or … Read More

Supply Chain risks are real. Sustainability is too often used as a generic, catchall term (like innovation) that has little impact within an organisation. To put meaning around the term, identify and review the risks that may affect the future viability of your enterprise. For operational type businesses, the majority of risks are related to the supply chains and they … Read More

What does sustainability mean to you? To address new circumstances, commercial organisations have always had to change their business model, products and processes. However, the added  challenge in this century is the increasing range of factors to be be considered. The various factors have often been incorporated under the heading of Sustainability. But sustainability can mean different things. An example … Read More

Review your supply chain performance measures. Performance measurement at department level is often locally focused, without links to performance of the wider organisation or events outside the business. My previous blog discussed ‘you behave how you are measured’ and noted that performance measurement can be debased. Managers (and their staff) can ‘tick the box’ while hiding behind what appears to … Read More

A perfect system goes wrong. Keeping your job, passing a performance review or gaining a promotion all require that you have at least met corporate performance requirements and adhered to the rules regarding how processes should be done. Problems occur when the performance requirements do not match the process; do you achieve the performance requirements or adhere to the process? … Read More