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Batching for DDMRP Flow: What is the Equation?

Four years ago I was invited to introduce DDMRP to a team from a medical device company, a subsidiary of a German group. Supply chain, purchasing, production, quality were in the room. They wanted to know more because they were suffering from long lead times, too much stock, unsatisfactory service levels, and faced many emergencies. The company had … Read more

Pull Flow Systems for All

Pull Flow, an Old Story… 

In 1987, as a young engineer at Philips, I had the chance to take part in a study trip to Japan and visit about ten companies there. In most of them you could see in each workshop card boards. In one of the factories I asked our guide what it was. He was astonished that I asked the question – it was so obvious: it is a Kanban board, to replenish supplies. That is normal. It was a non-event, a practice that was not questionedhad been in place for decades… but almost absent at the time from our western factories. Kanban dates to the ’50s. Drum-buffer-rope dates back to the ’80s. These are old concepts. Are they adapted to our modern, technological age?  

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Developing Supply Chain Agility

When I was a kid I learned to play ping-pong on a homemade table. The boards were not made from one piece, but were made from planks that had been assembled. With time and playing in the garden, the wood had worked, the boards had spread, bent, deformed – it never stopped us from playing hard games, but the bounces were quite unpredictable!  

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Let’s Simplify the Management of our Supply Chains

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” Leonardo da Vinci

Over the last few decades, manufacturers and distributors have made huge technological investments in their supply chains. At the same time, we’ve invested heavily in developing sophisticated supply chain management processes. Too often, however, any similarity between our technologies (ERP, DRP, APS, etc.) and our processes is a matter of luck more than design.

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Is DDMRP Really a New Idea?

Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP) is compatible with, and even supportive of, many other manufacturing philosophies: Lean, TOC, Flow, Pull, etc. However, since some of these ideas have been around for decades, most notably Lean Manufacturing, it can seem like DDMRP is an old idea given new life under a different name.

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How DDMRP Can Help You Improve Operations in 2020

As the DDMRP practice leader for PwC, I’ve had to do my fair share of explaining demand-driven concepts both internally and to customers. I want to thank Demand-Driven Technologies for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts on their blog.

In this first post, I want to speak to the business leaders in the company about why they should be exploring the benefits of DDMRP. In a follow-up post, I’ll dig more into some key DDMRP concepts for the practitioners in the audience who are well-versed in traditional material requirements and supply chain planning.

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What is Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP)?

A Beginner’s Guide to Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP) DDMRP, or Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning, is the next generation planning and execution method that aims to control the supply chain of a business or enterprise. This method is based on the preservation and management of the flow of relevant information. DDMRP deals with … Read more