The 4.0 shop floor — so talked about of late — is not only about incorporating real-time technology and digital tools. The 4.0 shop floor must be agile and respond to real customer demand. Lead times must be short, priorities must be visible, and decisions must be intuitive for all. In this series of articles, we look back at … Read more
Associating intuition and S&OP processes may seem… counterintuitive, right? For most companies that practice it, the S&OP process involves gathering information, facts, and hypotheses to analyze and then use to develop an action plan — a roadmap for negotiating changes in the coming months. It’s all about data crunching, logical reasoning, putting together elements from … Read more
The vast majority of business leaders do not come from supply chain, purchasing or operations. For a long time, when you were in these professions, your marshal’s baton was to become COO or Chief Supply Chain Officer. Of course there are notable exceptions, such as Tim Cook at Apple, but you’re probably more likely to … Read more
It’s hard to pass up a good deal from one of your preferred suppliers. But when the inventory piles up in your warehouse because you don’t have the other materials you need to manufacture your products? That good deal starts to seem less attractive. Frustrated by inventory inefficiencies, supply chain leaders at Ukrainian pet food … Read more
Automation has taken over distribution platforms and industrial sites. Robots and machines are used to prepare orders and manufacture our products. However, supply chain planning remains a human prerogative — a task for planners, buyers, master schedulers, forecasters, supply chain managers, and so on. Is this is something to be welcomed or worried about? Companies … Read more
Many companies struggle to avoid overstocks while responding to variations in demand. Seasonal businesses have an especially difficult time managing demand fluctuations without overspending on inventory or causing shortages that prompt customers to look for other options. Long lead times compound these issues, especially given how difficult it is to make accurate forecasts many months … Read more
Quantum physics teaches us that an isolated particle has no property in itself. A particle exists only through the interactions it has with other particles. It is the interactions that constitute matter. Within the broader universe, it is the interactions that make, for example, the earth turn around the sun, the moon around the earth, … Read more
International organizations often struggle with the question of whether and to what extent they should centralize their supply chain functions. Should demand and supply planners be integrated into a central function, at a group level or at a cluster level (whether by region or by business unit)? Or should these functions be as close to … Read more
You may have read about eco-friendly shipping containers, whose floors are made of bamboo, rather than devastating tropical wood forests. Concerns have already been raised about the sustainability of the adhesive that’s used when manufacturing these floors. But the skeptics at the back of the room might point out bigger flaws. Can a container really … Read more
Most companies are experiencing difficult times on the supply side. Containers are piling up on one side of the globe and are sorely lacking on the other. Delays are piling up, and variability is clearly at a maximum on the supply side. Can our supply chains really be demand driven in this context? Does pull … Read more
Under the shocks of the last two years, many companies have realized that they were suffering from structural weaknesses in their operations. The pandemic has put pressure on them to review certain processes. For example, there has been an increased focus on uncertainty in S&OP, because who would believe that in a pandemic and lock … Read more
Every planner today has hundreds or even thousands of references to manage. Often, these references must be synchronized during the assembly of products with complex bills of materials, where the slightest shortfall stops the flow. If you manufacture an electronic assembly with hundreds of components, a simple diode that costs nothing can stop everything. How … Read more
