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
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
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
We often get questions or comments about the level of supply chain maturity required for companies to be ready to implement DDMRP and realize the significant operational benefits it brings. These questions are sometimes paradoxical. Many companies tell us things like: “DDMRP sounds interesting, and well-suited to our environment, but we must first achieve more … Read more
You have probably already seen this diagram, which summarizes different manufacturing typologies, in one form or another: Is the Demand Driven model a good fit for these typologies? How would your demand driven manufacturing implementation change to support each environment? In each of these flow typologies, with the exception of Engineering-to-Order (ETO), customer demand moves … Read more
Adaptive forecasting. Driverless trucks. Autonomous planning. AI is coming for your supply chain. Right? In many ways, industry watchers can be forgiven for having a little skepticism when it comes to AI in supply chain. According to research by Deloitte, only 40% of supply chain executives said they are actively using AI. The 2021 MHI Annual Industry Report put that figure … Read more
When you learn the principles of MRP, you use a view like the one below. Periods 1 2 3 4 5 6 Forecast 40 50 40 40 70 20 Registered orders 80 45 30 50 50 5 Requirements 80 45 40 50 70 20 Projected Inventory 50 170 125 85 35 … Read more
What happens in our brain when we exercise our intuition? A French scientific magazine recently devoted a fascinating dossier to intuition (Science & Vie, August 2021 https://www.science-et-vie.com/archives/n-1247 ). It appears in particular that intuition is the automatic implementation by our brain of knowledge accumulated in our long-term memory. Far from being a random and therefore unreliable process, … Read more
