Effectiveness or efficiency The previous blogpost discussed the benefits from reducing the number of stock keeping units (SKUs) offered for businesses operating in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) or consumer product goods (CPG) sector. Alternatively, there can be the necessity of adapting operations to an increase in the number of SKUs. A recent report, published by the consulting firm … Read More
Product rationalisation or more SKUs in supply chains?
Consumer facing businesses A consumer facing business is identified as either FMCG ‘fast moving consumer goods) or CPG (consumer packaged goods – governed by ‘use by’ dates). The previous blogpost identified that for these types of business, the Supply Chains group should have a product line elimination process as part of inventory management. Consumer facing businesses have the perceived need to … Read More
Inventory Policy in Supply Chains requires CoV for SKUs
Supply Chains market segments different from Marketing In the drive for cost reduction, businesses have emphasised the higher utilisation of machines. This has resulted in no spare capacity on internal equipment, and the outsourcing of manufacturing has also removed capacity buffers. This leaves inventory as the buffer against variability of demands from customers, consumers or internal sources and the supply … Read More
Segment elements in your Supply Chains to reduce Risk
Can the future be forecast? The amount of complexity within the planning and scheduling of supply chains has enabled software suppliers to promote ‘solutions’ that provide answers to planning questions to four decimal places. But is this required? Think of yourself; you know more about you than anyone else. How far into the future (by week) can you forecast your … Read More
Reducing Complexity for planning your Supply Chains
Complex and Complexity When discussing Supply Chains and their Flows (of items, money, data and information), the terms Complex and Complexity (or complicated) are commonly used. While sounding similar, they are different. The Supply Chains Network of a business is an example of a system that is complex. The Network contains many organisations with varying relationships that can be dependent, … Read More