There’s a new boss in town and she is tougher than any boss you’ve had before. She wants what she wants, when and where she wants it. She’s the new digitally-empowered consumer and she is dictating how retailers and consumer goods companies must transform their supply chains to serve her. This new boss will access […]

Do you remember the old days when the hottest topic in supply chain software evaluations was whether it was smarter to go with the “good enough” applications from the major enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors or to go with the superior functionality of the best-of-breed vendors even though integration was a concern? IT argued that […]

As the senseless violence in Charleston reminded us, as did similar episodes in Baltimore, Ferguson, and Newtown, we are far from living up to our nation’s ideal of “One nation, under God.” The question is whether we will once again wring our hands, say our homilies, and perhaps remove a flag, and then go back […]

Supply chain processes have existed since Eve brought the forbidden apple to Adam, even though the term supply chain is a relatively recent one. Over the millennia since, supply chains have evolved at an ever-greater pace. During the long evolution of the supply chain there have been certain inflection points where significant change happens fairly […]

During her welcome remarks at the 2012 Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) Annual Conference in Atlanta, Nancy Nix, chair of the CSCMP board of directors, said that companies should judge the value of supply chains going forward by their resilience, agility, efficiency and innovation. This is a far cry from the traditional view […]

Achieving inventory visibility across the enterprise and extended supply networks has been a goal for supply chain professionals for over a decade, but achieving true visibility is no easy task. As recent analyst research indicates, while supply chain visibility is very important to almost all companies, there is a large gap between the importance of […]

We’re all familiar with the problem of silos within organizations and how unproductive they can be to the company as a whole. But have you thought about how the same thing tends to happen with your transportation operations? Can you truly claim to have “one-stop shopping” across all locations, carriers, modes, fleets and parcel? If […]

For well over a decade we’ve talked about how supply chain visibility will help minimize the impact of disruptions, decrease order cycle times and risk, and improve service levels. Yet, after all these years, why are people still talking about supply chain visibility like it’s in the future? About now you may be thinking you’ve […]

Remember when inventory was just something off the production line stored in a warehouse until it was pushed out to customers? In the past, companies worried about how much safety stock to keep, along with inventory turn rates and the associated carrying costs, but the most important thing was keeping production lines running, driving the […]