A future for Supply Chains. I am joining the ‘crystal ball’ community with a few broad observations about events that could influence your future supply chain decisions. Changes affecting Logistics that are happening now may take less time than expected to be adopted, or have no effect, so my observations must be read with a critical view. This will require … Read More
Using materials multiple times is a Logistics challenge
Waste in Supply Chains. The United Nations (UN) has an objective that by 2030, global food waste will be reduced by 50 percent. This is an ambitious goal, which not only requires leadership by governments, but active involvement by supply chain professionals – those that view Logistics as more than ‘box shifting’. Food waste in the agricultural supply chains of … Read More
Procurement Spend Analysis is hard for IT applications
Analysis and intelligent systems. Analysing the total spend of your organisation on a regular basis appears to be a logical and sensible task. But why do few organisations do it, especially with access to IT applications that enable ‘big data’, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence? Some of the answer has been made public in Australia over the past few weeks, … Read More
Hype and reality about delivery lead times in Logistics
Hype about delivery lead times. Citizens find it difficult to escape the call from politicians and the popular media to increase productivity and support innovation; typically without explanation of what productivity and innovation are or mean. Allied to the call are press releases and articles that tell us of the wondrous new technologies and all their benefits. As an interested … Read More
Bringing demand and supply chains together with S&OP
The same view for sales and supply chains. Your successful enterprise cannot be ‘demand driven’ if it is not ‘supply supported’ – a statement that appears to be obvious. Yet I recently read an article which said the ‘old’ supply chain focus was outdated and the ‘new’ focus will be on the customer and demand management. As if the customer … Read More