Analysis and intelligent systems. Analysing the total spend of your organisation on a regular basis appears to be a logical and sensible task. But why do few organisations do it, especially with access to IT applications that enable ‘big data’, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence? Some of the answer has been made public in Australia over the past few weeks, … Read More
Hype and reality about delivery lead times in Logistics
Hype about delivery lead times. Citizens find it difficult to escape the call from politicians and the popular media to increase productivity and support innovation; typically without explanation of what productivity and innovation are or mean. Allied to the call are press releases and articles that tell us of the wondrous new technologies and all their benefits. As an interested … Read More
Bringing demand and supply chains together with S&OP
The same view for sales and supply chains. Your successful enterprise cannot be ‘demand driven’ if it is not ‘supply supported’ – a statement that appears to be obvious. Yet I recently read an article which said the ‘old’ supply chain focus was outdated and the ‘new’ focus will be on the customer and demand management. As if the customer … Read More
Organisation to improve your supply chains performance
Focus your supply chain organisation. The overall objective of your supply chains is to ‘satisfy customer needs’. To achieve this requires ‘the time-related positioning of internal and external resources to provide availability of goods and services for customers at the lowest total cost’. This answers the question from senior management concerning ‘What will be gained from the supply chain organisation?’ … Read More
Altering your supply network can be a big exercise
Supply chains are more than cost. The recent US presidential campaign shone the light on bringing jobs back to America – sometimes called on-shoring or re-shoring. Although Apple has been the target company, the possibility is there for many other businesses. But while the rhetoric and comments have mainly focused on costs and price, little discussion has occurred about the … Read More