Blog

The virtues of anticipation As supply chain professionals, we’ve all been trained to think ahead. Forecasting sales, foreseeing capacities, material requirements, personnel needs – a good part of our activity is devoted, quite rightly, to anticipation. Of course, this is absolutely necessary: we need to prepare our company to meet future needs. Anticipating doesn’t mean … Read more

A recurring question is: what are the prerequisites for deploying Demand Driven tactics in the supply chain? Will it work with our ERP? Does this apply to our company? Do we first need to get a better grip on our MRP? I’ve heard this provocative answer from Carol Ptak several times: if you don’t have … Read more

In our factories, a practice has become established: short-interval animation. Team meetings are held with operators, reviewing what has happened in the last few hours, the team’s priorities for the coming shift, the status of actions in progress, and problems to be solved. This same ritual is repeated by sector and at the plant level. … Read more

2014: Do You Know VUCA? When I started arguing with companies about the relevance of Demand Driven tactics eleven years ago, I had to explain the volatile business environment at some length. “Today’s environment is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, so we need to develop supply chain agility and resilience. It is illusory to … Read more

Understanding Good vs. Bad Stock When you work in any industry that deals with products, you quickly realize that inventory management is a complicated process. Businesses constantly struggle to find the right balance—do they need more stock, or is it better to reduce it? How much is too much? How little is too little? These … Read more

Urban legend has it that we need a very accurate forecast. Of course, we know that this won’t happen, as actual demand will differ from forecasts. Nevertheless, major efforts are being made to improve forecast accuracy in demand-driven planning. For the sake of curiosity, let’s take a look at an item replenished using a Demand … Read more

Understanding Safety Stock Calculation Strategic inventory positioning is critical in supply chain management, and one of the most important aspects of this is determining safety stock. Statistical formulas are commonly used to size safety stocks, helping businesses account for demand variability and lead-time variability. A well-known formula used in inventory management incorporates these variability assumptions, … Read more

At the end of 2023, while attending a supply chain planning conference organized by a leading analyst firm, I was particularly impressed by one of the presentations. An Austrian company presented its project to overhaul its supply chain planning processes, with the support of a major consulting firm for the implementation of a digital supply … Read more

The Pareto law in inventory management is essential because it allows us to focus on the essentials. To apply it, we may be tempted to carry out an ABC classification for inventory. This classification is encouraged by the literature and Supply Chain courses. In many cases, this classification is generated at regular intervals by a … Read more

Salespeople’s core business is to sell – to develop the company’s (profitable) sales. It’s not the job of salespeople to draw up sales forecasts, to ask for this or that level of stock, to worry about the availability of this or that component, to deal with out-of-stock situations, or to catch up with their customers. … Read more

Good resolutions, you know, those things you decided to do at the beginning of last year that… what was it again? Ah yes, but no, this year it’s different because the few good business resolutions that follow to steer your flows are now easy to put into practice! I’ll Protect and Accelerate the Flow If … Read more