A systems failure On April 28, millions of people and metro systems, airports hospitals and communication systems across Spain, Portugal and parts of France were affected by an unexpected power outage. Across Europe, the aim is for an integrated electricity system, but what about small events far away that can quickly escalate into serious emergencies, without national governments being aware? … Read More
Core Supply Chains can be more Agile with MTO and ATO
MTO and ATO Providing Availability of products for customers is governed by the management of inventory, capacity and lead times. Of the three, operational capacity within a business is the resource least influenced by external events and decisions. As discussed in the previous blogpost, Make to Order (MTO) includes production operations that transform materials, and Assemble to Order (ATO) is … Read More
Operations that can respond to changes in Supply Chains
Operations model The current geopolitical actions add more Uncertainty in a business, which is the driver of risk, so enterprises could be reviewing their business model. The Supply Chains group, or its functions of Procurement, Operations Planning and Logistics will provide input to the decision process. This input should provide options concerning the positioning of Operations from the perspective of … Read More
Bad data through supply chains provides poor outcomes
Bad data example There continues to be a deluge of articles, videos and conferences extoling the benefits of Artificial Intelligence. But there is less emphasis on what businesses must do internally to implement the technologies. One of the major requirements is to use clean data, otherwise it is ‘garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) for IT systems. The lack of clean … Read More
US import tariffs and change in global supply chains
US tariffs background The US has announced increased import tariffs by country. This has been followed by much commentary about the likely effects on world trade. However, little has been said or written that provides a background to the announcement. This blogpost summarises background information taken from the newsletter Thoughts from the Frontline, by the conservative American financial analyst John … Read More