Multinationals need war rooms to deal with the trauma being inflected on their supply chains. A key application needed in these war rooms is supply chain design.
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Archive for Supply Chain Network Design
I recently wrapped up my Supply Chain Collaborative Networks (SCCN)market study which looks at the total size of the market, the forecasted growth through 2023, and the leading suppliers across a number of categories including industry, region, and customer size. The study includes a holistic view of the SCCN outlook. Supply Chain Collaboration Networks are a collaborative solution for supply chain processes. It’s built on a public cloud, a many-to-many architecture, and it supports a […]
Read More →Two of the biggest and often overlooked challenges facing enterprises today are knowing where to set up shop and how to best leverage enterprise assets across the supply chain network. In the globalized economy, most supply chains are complex and geographically dispersed, serving multiple markets. However, even the small business owner – who markets “farm-to-table” products – faces similar supply chain decision points, albeit fewer in number. Deciding where to locate a hub, where to […]
Read More →Product and service innovation, driven by digital technologies, is key to gaining extra value from new product introductions. One particularly interesting development is the emergence of modular plants. Forecasting a NPI can be very difficult. Modular plants help companies to scale economically.
Read More →There is terrific payback from supply chain design solutions. At GM, the supply chain design team is an in-house consulting group. Annually, the projects they take on save between 5 to 10 percent of the in scope spend. They have done many projects in the logistics area, some on an ongoing basis. Logistics costs as a percentage of revenue decreased every year from 2013 to 2018. That is a remarkable feat in today’s freight environment. Considering the size of GM’s transportation spend, $6.5 billion, and the length of time they have been at this, it would not surprise me at all if this small team has saved GM over a billion dollars.
Read More →In 2015, Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world, got terrible publicity when a spy drone flew over farms operated by one of their subsidiaries and took pictures of lagoons filled with pig feces and urine. Sustainability initiatives provide a way for global brands to improve their brand reputation and reduce risks of further damage to the brand. Smithfield has certainly upped their sustainability game. Last week, on May 8th, the company released […]
Read More →In the not too distant past, when confronted with a decision between investing in sustainability efforts versus corporate survivability, the choice was clear for most organizations. However, as the economic recovery has gained strength and consumers have expressed a desire for corporations to focus on these efforts, green supply chain practices are emerging again. Organizations not only view themselves as being able to “afford” investing resources in “greening” their operations but also see that these […]
Read More →Business students are all exposed to the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis tool. This last week I came across several interesting stories – or in one case a presentation – that all centered on different aspects of SWOT in the supply chain realm. First, STRENGTHS; Greg Toornman – the Director of Global Materials, Logistics, and Freight Management at AGCO – spoke last Wednesday (February 14th) at ARC’s 22nd Annual Industry Forum. AGCO is […]
Read More →As the global economic outlook improves, worldwide mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity is predicted to pick up. M&A deal volume and deal value remains strong. According to recent surveys, 56 percent of responding companies expect to actively pursue acquisitions in the next 12 months[1], with global M&A value projected to top $3.2 trillion, up 23 percent from this year[2]. Despite the increasing numbers, failure rates for M&A initiatives are extremely high. Depending on which report you […]
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Supply Chain Brief
4 Ways Supply Chain Modeling Enhances Enterprise Resilience
Supply chain modeling is essential to substantiated resiliency analysis and to the planning of risk responses. A supply chain model is the digital representation of the structure, product flows and policies of a physical supply chain. It is created by transforming data into predetermined structures, so that such data templates can be used in conjunction with mathematical algorithms, to determine improved future state structures, product flows and policies. Here’s a look at four areas of risk that can businesses can address through modeling and analytics.
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