Internal and external collaboration Collaboration is a term often used in articles that discuss Agility and flexibility in supply chains, requiring digital tools that enable data and information to be exchanged between contracting parties. In addition, the current pandemic has resulted in government requirements for people to work at a distance from others. This has accelerated a trend for employees … Read More
Technologies in Supply Chains, jobs and assumptions
Technologies and acceptance Articles by commentators have forecast that technologies will result in the loss of millions of jobs within a few years, including in supply chain functions. But are these forecast accurate? A blogpost from 2017 illustrates that forecasting job losses due to technologies is not new. Now, a recent forecast stated that jobs involved with materials management (and … Read More
Building an effective Supply Chains Strategic Plan
Structure for the planning process To build a Supply Chains Strategic Plan requires knowledge of an organisation’s Supply Network, the wider political and economic environment and interactions throughout the organisation that can influence the Plan’s effectiveness. Your supply chains will not become ‘integrated’ if the Supply Network comprises independent organisations with their own business objectives and policies. The aim must … Read More
Knowledge, an input to the Supply Chains Strategic Plan
Changes in supply chains starts with you Currently, here are many business ‘re’ words being used in commentary about changes required to supply chains. Terms such as: responsive, resilience, re-shore, restructure, regionalisation and redundancy. Building the Supply Chains Strategic Plan for your organisation’s current and future supply network will need to challenge assumptions about the behaviour of different flows and … Read More
Capacity within your Supply Chains is an input to S&OP
Capacity in supply chains Like many aspects of supply chains, capacity should not be considered on its own, but within the three elements that provide Availability for a business – capacity, lead times and inventory. A business will recognize the attributes of each element and be comfortable with independent actions inside the organisations that are done to ‘help’ the business: … Read More