Are you familiar with the “five focusing steps”? This approach is at the heart of the Theory of Constraints (TOC), the school of thought initiated by Dr. Eli Goldratt, author of the bestseller “The Goal.” Having identified our major constraint and optimized its exploitation, we are now going to subordinate the company’s other resources to … Read more
Are you familiar with the “five focusing steps”? This approach is at the heart of the Theory of Constraints (TOC), the school of thought initiated by Dr. Eli Goldratt, author of the bestseller The Goal. The “Five Focusing Steps” are a counterpart to Deming’s PDCA – Plan Do Check Act: they are five steps for … Read more
There’s no point in running… In your production resources, in your production orders, among your suppliers, you have hares and tortoises. The trick is to get there on time (yes, I know, that’s not the original moral). This is what is measured by the most important supply chain performance indicator for the supply chain: the … Read more
A chain, or network, is a system that brings together players with different motivations. A supply chain comprises suppliers and customers. Both want to maximize their profits, which can be antagonistic – sellers and buyers negotiate this on a daily basis. A company comprises a set of functions whose performance is measured on indicators that … Read more
Numerous software solutions, and not the least, are available to optimize inventories. Just Google “inventory optimization” and you’ll see a wide range of tools aimed at tackling stock management. In fact, if we take a closer look, a stock can’t be optimized, let’s see why. First of all, you need to understand what stock is … Read more
In mathematics, the law of large numbers is a fundamental principle of probability theory, which states that when a random experiment is repeated many times, the average of the results obtained converges toward the theoretical mean value (the mathematical expectation) of this experiment. Let’s keep it simple. If you roll a die once, you’ll get … Read more
During the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, all kinds of predictions were made about the medal chances of different countries. Some have even developed algorithms, predictive models and business planning tools, which of course have been wildly wrong. Numerous sporting competitions are scrutinized by bookmakers and are the subject of bets. Every major election is the … Read more
Even if they don’t know it, the notion of a decoupling point is very familiar to your favorite pizza chef. Last week I made a call to the excellent pizzeria near my house to order two pizzas. But wait a minute. There’s a menu of 25 different pizzas, that’s a lot of different ingredients, and … Read more
ERP systems are not renowned for their simplicity. With the overwhelming ERP system complexity, there is a lot of technical data and parameters to maintain. Planners are often lost or dependent on data maintained by other remote teams. They have no way of ensuring that the system’s recommendations are correct. Usually, they end up calculating … Read more
For you, it’s clear: it’s time to overhaul your supply chain practices—teams are under stress, performance is unsatisfactory, we’re not agile enough, and our systems are outdated. The need for supply chain transformation has never been more evident. Yes, it’s clear to you, but how do you convince the executive committee, and obtain the budgets … Read more
At our June 2024 user conference Luca Cicchiello, Corporate VP of Supply Chain at Hutchinson, a global company with sales of over €4.5 billion, testified: “In our company, we’ve known for fifteen years how we should operate our supply chain: an end-to-end pull flow anticipated and configured by an S&OP process – but we were … Read more
A supply chain, industrial operations or distribution operations, is above all a flow. We start with raw materials, and a few steps later we have a finished product that meets a market need. That “a few steps later” is sometimes an understatement. I remember a crisis cell when I worked in electronics, because we were … Read more
