Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. That applies to supply chain operations as well. If we don’t learn from what is happening day-by-day in our supply chains, we are doomed to repeat disconnected planning processes that lead to mismatches between supply and demand. These mismatches are costly and can lead to service problems such as out-of-stocks and over-stocks. But with fires to fight every day it’s hard for supply chain managers to […]
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Author Archive for Fabrizio Brasca
We have all seen it. We have all heard it. Perhaps many, or most of us, have even participated in the ongoing debate over which is more critical; transportation planning or transportation execution? Some trivialize planning as something generic and focus on the hard realities of execution. Others advocate the basic principle that a better plan leads to improved execution. In typical Canadian fashion, I would argue that the answer is somewhere in the middle. […]
Read More →In my last Logistics Viewpoints commentary, I shared with you some of the experiences I acquired over my many years of traveling around the world. The commentary was very well received, so this time around I thought I would do something similar but looking over a span of time instead of distance. A week or so ago I completed my 19th year at JDA Software. I started as an account manager at a small startup […]
Read More →I am fortunate. The supporting facts behind this blanket statement are gleefully numerous, but for the purposes of a blog focused on transportation and logistics, I am going to whittle it down to the cumulative opportunities I have had to fly, quite literally, around the world and see a multitude of logistics challenges and best practices. From Greenville, South Carolina to Guangzhou, China, I have witnessed incredible challenges as well as quite clever innovations. As […]
Read More →In my previous guest commentary on the evolution of transportation management, Driving Value from a Transportation Management Center: Think Global, Act Local, I discussed how transportation best practices were evolving from more rigid, centralized control towers to more flexible and collaborative Transportation Management Centers (TMC). The TMC merges technology, organization and processes to establish a set of services leveraging the scale and efficiency of consolidated network planning, procurement and unified metrics with the agility of […]
Read More →To centralize or not to centralize? That is the question – or at least it is a major discussion point for many large, global companies considering how best to manage transportation across today’s vast supply and distribution networks. The argument to centralize usually includes the advantages of economies of scale when dealing with carriers and opportunities for better utilization through back-hauls and continuous moves. The argument for decentralization often involves strong relationships with local carriers, […]
Read More →The lasting image of the supply chain in 2012 is one of a consumer with a smartphone engrossed in making an online purchase. The story that goes with that image is all about the rapid changes that this new “connected consumer” has injected into our industry in 2012. So let’s take a deeper look at this evolution and some key things to watch for in 2013. Historically, transportation has been treated as an ancillary function, […]
Read More →I was recently invited to participate in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Transportation & Logistics’ roundtable focused on the trade-off between planning and execution. The event spanned two days and presented an agenda of discussion topics across the multiple time horizons of planning (strategic, tactical and operational) as well as views on process and technology. The audience was comprised of an excellent collection of experts, including practitioners from a variety of industries, […]
Read More →The rise of the omni-consumer has changed virtually every aspect of the way retailers and manufacturers conduct their businesses. Brick-and-mortar retailers are forced to compete with alternative channels on the basis of price while also keeping their service quality high. Manufacturers are challenged to operate with razor-thin margins while still offering the innovative products and continuous updates dictated by today’s shorter lifecycles. While the omni-consumer has created new challenges in every part of the supply […]
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Supply Chain Brief
Creating Transportation Visibility
No, this is not yet another article about capturing network milestones or establishing better carrier connectivity, but rather the more strategic issue of how companies can raise the visibility of transportation within the domain of corporate initiatives. I recently attended the American Shipper Executive Summit in New York City and early in the agenda, Eric Johnson, research director and IT editor for American Shipper, presented a view on the transportation information technology landscape. One of […]
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