Category Archives: Supply Chain Management

The Right Solution for Contractor and Supplier Management

Posted on by

The benefits of outsourcing to suppliers and contractors is clear, but the associated risks are largely unseen, and the breakneck pace of change and the pressures of financial reality can cause important, risk-mitigating considerations such as contractor safety to be overlooked – which could be not only an ethical disaster but a business disaster as well.

Contractors and suppliers can provide many essential benefits to businesses such as expertise, efficiency, and cost savings.

In addition, companies working with contractors and suppliers can scale their business up and down depending on market demand.

The benefits of outsourcing to suppliers and contractors is clear, but the associated risks are largely unseen.

To add fuel to the fire, the breakneck pace of change and the pressures of financial reality can cause important, risk-mitigating considerations such as contractor safety to be overlooked – which could be not only an ethical disaster but a business disaster as well.

Contractors working on your site and suppliers providing materials should be considered internal employees.

If contractors are injured on the job, it can seriously damage your organization’s reputation and impede your growth.

To maximize the benefit and minimize the risk of these relationships, companies and their suppliers must commit to a common culture of safety.

This means companies need to stay engaged with their contractors beyond simply hiring them. Companies should:

  1. Regularly collect information from their suppliers that demonstrate a commitment to safety such as incident rates (lagging indicators) and safety programs (leading indicators).
  2. Continuously monitor suppliers’ insurance coverage to protect the company in case something does happen.
  3. Audit worksites on a consistent basis to ensure that safety policies are enforced.
  4. Monitor the condition of equipment that contractors use to carry out their jobs.
  5. Ensure each contracted worker has the proper licenses and certifications to perform the job safely.
  6. Provide site-specific training required for each position.

Read more at The Right Solution for Contractor and Supplier Management

If you like what you read, share it and subscribe us to be the first one to get updates

Retailers worth $3.3trn scaling up supply chain sustainability

Posted on by

Leading retail powerhouses are stepping up on supply chain sustainability, according to the latest figures from CDP, a global environmental impact non-profit.

The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, has just been joined by three more of the top 20 retail companies – CVS Health, Target Corporation and Tesco – in collecting data from suppliers to reduce environmental risk and cut carbon emissions in the supply chain.

Ten years after CDP started collecting supply chain data on behalf of the world’s largest purchasing organisations, 115 organisations – representing a combined annual spend of more than US$3.3 trillion – are now requesting data from over 11,500 suppliers.

This is more than a 15% increase from last year, when 99 organisations requested data.

Sonya Bhonsle, Head of Supply Chain at CDP, commented: “With emissions in the supply chain on average around four times greater than those from a company’s direct operations – and rising to up to seven times greater for retailers and consumer-facing companies – large multinational corporations cannot comprehensively address their environmental impact without looking to their supply chains.

“It’s very encouraging to see so many of the world’s biggest buyers taking supply chain sustainability seriously. By requesting data from their suppliers, they are shining a light on the risks hidden deep within their production chains – and uncovering a myriad of opportunities for reducing their overall environmental footprint, boosting innovation and cutting costs.”

The rise in companies scrutinising their supply chains coincides with growing momentum behind the take-up of science-based targets – goals that allow companies to reduce their emissions in line with the decarbonisation required to keep global temperature increase below two degrees Celsius, the central aim of the Paris Agreement.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which helps companies develop and approves such targets, requires companies to set scope 3 targets if their scope 3 emissions account for at least 40% of their total emissions. For global retailers that do not manufacture many of the products they sell, scope 3 emissions in their supply chain can be far greater than 40%.

Read more at Retailers worth $3.3trn scaling up supply chain sustainability

Share your opinions with us in the comment box below. Subscribe to be the first to get our updates.

The Growing Maturity Of Blockchain

Posted on by

Speakers from the technology community included Anant Kadiyala, Director of Blockchain & Industry Solutions at Oracle; IBM’s David Noller, Executive Architect Watson IoT – Blockchain and Industry 4.0; and Steven Kim, a Senior Director at SAP. The user community was represented by Jeff Denton, the Senior Director of Global Secure Supply Chain at AmerisourceBergen.

Blockchain technology is incredibly elastic. It can be shaped in different ways, to fit different processes, network node architectures, and participants. It is difficult to generalize about blockchain for business in a way that is universally true. But IBM, Oracle, and SAP – probably the three largest players in the business application blockchain space – were all addressing this topic in a very similar way.

One point all participants agreed on is that blockchain for business applications is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first blockchain application, it is an unregulated shadow-currency, and it is widely seen as a mechanism more conducive to financial speculation than conducting business.

IBM, Oracle, and SAP all built their blockchain platforms on Hyperledger, a technology more suitable to building business applications. Like blockchain for cryptocurrencies, there are mechanisms to make sure transactions are authenticated across a network of participants with distributed databases.

There are several differences between cryptocurrencies and blockchain for SCM. Business blockchain does not include a cryptocurrency, although there may be network style applications that develop that will punch out to the banking system; it is not an open community that any participant can join, but will instead generally involve closed networks of supply chain partners that have been invited to join (permissioned blockchains); blockchain for managing an end to end SCM process can, and probably will, include more business logic and can even utilize IoT sensor data.

Read more at The Growing Maturity Of Blockchain For Supply Chain Management

Share your opinions at the comment box below and subscribe us to get updates.

Related articles

10 Ways Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Supply Chain Management

Posted on by

Machine learning makes it possible to discover patterns in supply chain data by relying on algorithms that quickly pinpoint the most influential factors to a supply networks’ success, while constantly learning in the process.

Discovering new patterns in supply chain data has the potential to revolutionize any business. Machine learning algorithms are finding these new patterns in supply chain data daily, without needing manual intervention or the definition of taxonomy to guide the analysis. The algorithms iteratively query data with many using constraint-based modeling to find the core set of factors with the greatest predictive accuracy. Key factors influencing inventory levels, supplier quality, demand forecasting, procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, production planning, transportation management and more are becoming known for the first time. New knowledge and insights from machine learning are revolutionizing supply chain management as a result.

The ten ways machine learning is revolutionizing supply chain management include:

  1. Machine learning algorithms and the apps running them are capable of analyzing large, diverse data sets fast, improving demand forecasting accuracy.
  2. Reducing freight costs, improving supplier delivery performance, and minimizing supplier risk are three of the many benefits machine learning is providing in collaborative supply chain networks.
  3. Machine Learning and its core constructs are ideally suited for providing insights into improving supply chain management performance not available from previous technologies.
  4. Machine learning excels at visual pattern recognition, opening up many potential applications in physical inspection and maintenance of physical assets across an entire supply chain network.
  5. Gaining greater contextual intelligence using machine learning combined with related technologies across supply chain operations translates into lower inventory and operations costs and quicker response times to customers.
  6. Forecasting demand for new products including the causal factors that most drive new sales is an area machine learning is being applied to today with strong results.
  7. Companies are extending the life of key supply chain assets including machinery, engines, transportation and warehouse equipment by finding new patterns in usage data collected via IoT sensors.
  8. Improving supplier quality management and compliance by finding patterns in suppliers’ quality levels and creating track-and-trace data hierarchies for each supplier, unassisted.
  9. Machine learning is improving production planning and factory scheduling accuracy by taking into account multiple constraints and optimizing for each.
  10. Combining machine learning with advanced analytics, IoT sensors, and real-time monitoring is providing end-to-end visibility across many supply chains for the first time.

Read more at 10 Ways Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Supply Chain Management

If you find this article interesting, consider sharing it with your network, and share your opinions with us in the comment box.

The Partnership for Supply Chain Management Implements One Network’s Control Tower Solution

Posted on by

One Network Enterprises, a global provider of multi-party digital network platform and services, recently announced that The Partnership for Supply Chain Management (PFSCM)—a nonprofit organization providing global procurement and distribution services for low- and middle-income countries—has implemented One Network’s Supply Chain Control Tower solution to advance its end-to-end supply chain visibility.

According to spokesmen, PFSCM has a long history of innovating and driving fundamental improvements in the performance of global health supply chains.

Spokesmen added that it is migrating critical requisition, order, and transportation management functions into its existing One Network Real Time Value Network (RTVN) decision-making supply chain suite.

“Our goal is to strengthen, develop, and manage secure, reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable global supply chains to improve the lives of people in underdeveloped countries,” said Richard Owens, PFSCM Director. “By extending One Network’s Control Tower capabilities on our RTVN, we can provide real-time visibility, digital collaboration, and advanced analytics to move to true data-driven decision-making. Our collaboration with One Network is central to PFSCM’s digital transformation and provides us the foundation we need to drive the next wave of innovation within global supply chains for public health.”

In an interview with SCMR, Owens said that PFSCM first conducted an internal evaluation of its existing systems, plus a landscape analysis of what potential solutions existed before making the deal.

“The evaluation produced six scenarios, consisting of different combination of three systems,” he said. “The first recommendation was to go with One Network, which was accepted first by PFSCM’s management team, and then by PFSCM’s Board, who approved the project budget last September.

Read more at The Partnership for Supply Chain Management Implements One Network’s Control Tower Solution

Contact us for further information or leave your comments below. Subscribe us to be the first one to get our updates.

 

Related articles

Building a Digital Supply Chain Ready for the Future

Posted on by

With the options that digital technologies provide to develop new business models and new strategies, companies that integrate digital technologies into their supply chain can quickly improve service levels while cutting costs up to 30%.

Complaints from frustrated customers were mounting at a major US retailer.
More than 20% said they could not find the company’s branded products in shops because items were out of stock.

The problem was that efforts to improve service disrupted the company’s low-cost distribution model.

It had the right infrastructure but lacked the digital tools necessary to increase supply chain reliability.

Moving quickly, the leadership team invested in digital tools to obtain real-time data, shorten replenishment cycle times, optimize deliveries and predict future demand.

As data streamed in from stores the minute shoppers purchased goods, the company rapidly restocked hot-selling items to capture sales that it previously had lost.

The shift cut retail cycle times by 20%, to four days, generating a 0.5% increase in sales (see Figure 1 below).

And that was just the first wave of improvement.

Over the next 24 months, the company aims to reduce the time needed to fill store orders to two days, for a 60% total reduction in retail cycle time.

Companies that integrate digital technologies into their supply chain can quickly improve service levels while cutting costs up to 30%.

Just as important are the options that digital technologies provide to develop new business models and new strategies.

For instance, leading-edge companies such as Adidas are deploying 3D printing to move some production closer to customers, offering greater product customization and shorter lead times.

Read more at Building a Digital Supply Chain Ready for the Future

Please share your opinions in the comment box below and subscribe us to get updates.

Related articles

M&S selects Zetes to transform fresh food supply chain

Posted on by

Marks and Spencer (M&S) has selected Zetes to help transform visibility and fulfilment across its fresh food supply chain.

The partnership will also see greater collaboration between M&S and its food suppliers via Zetes’ supply chain visibility platform, ZetesOlympus.

Through ZetesOlympus, M&S will gain real-time fulfilment performance insight across its fresh food supply chain, with the platform helping to foresee any possible disruptions to availability, via real time alerts, meaning M&S can take fast preventative action to maintain its fresh food fulfilment standards.

The platform, which connects M&S to all its logistics providers, will also encourage greater collaboration across the supply chain.

With a significant and growing presence in the food market and a substantial supplier and logistics partner base, supply chain visibility is crucial to M&S. ZetesOlympus will provide a strong basis for enhanced collaboration and continuous improvement between key stakeholders within the supply chain network.

Syd Reid, Supply Chain Director, M&S said: “It is crucial for us to have complete visibility of our supply chain and be immediately alerted when unexpected events occur. That way, we can be agile and react at pace to ensure that our customers can get their favourite M&S food products when they want them, no matter what.”

Alain Wirtz, CEO of Zetes, commented: “Customer expectation for an efficient and fast omni-channel retail experience continues to grow and as such, the need for accurate, real-time visibility and proactive monitoring within the supply chain heightens. We are delighted that M&S has chosen Zetes to help it continue to deliver the level of service that its customers value.”

Read more at M&S selects Zetes to transform fresh food supply chain

Share your opinions with us and subscribe to get updates

Related articles

Apple makes “significant progress” with green supply chain ambitions

Posted on by

Apple’s efforts to create a greener supply chain resulted in significant progress in 2017, according to the tech giant.

Since 2007, almost 15mn supplier employees have been trained on their rights, including 3mn just last year.

All iPhone final assembly sites around the world have now been certified as zero waste to landfill, while more of Apple’s products were made using renewable energy, while also reducing overall energy usage and carbon emissions.

In a release, Apple said its suppliers implemented energy efficiency improvements that reduced more than 320,000 annualised metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2017.

Apple claims it “goes deeper into the supply chain to find issues and fix them” more than any other company in its industry and each year it will do more to raise the bar and protect the people who make Apple products as well as the planet.

Last year Apple launched a programme to help improve health awareness for women at its suppliers, so they are better prepared to take control of their health and share that knowledge back to their families and communities.

The programme started at facilities in India and China and provides information and access to services, including self-examination for early cancer detection, nutrition, personal care and maternal health. Apple aims to reach 1mn women at its suppliers around the world by 2020.

“We believe that everyone making Apple products deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and we’re proud that almost 15mn people understand their workplace rights as a result of the work we’ve done over the years. We’re going further with health education programs and new opportunities for advancement at our suppliers,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO.

“A new preventive health care curriculum is encouraging women to focus on their personal health, and hopefully share that knowledge with their families and communities. Our goal is to reach 1mn women by 2020. We know our work is never done and we’re committed to raising the bar every year across our supply chain.”

Read more at Apple makes “significant progress” with green supply chain ambitions

Share your opinion with us in the comment box, and subscribe to get updates.

Related articles

How LLamasoft Is Designing Success For Customers’ Supply Chains

Posted on by

Ann Arbor, Michigan-based supply chain design software business LLamasoft is considered one of the fastest growing technology companies in North America. The company was founded by Don Hicks and Toby Brzoznowski in the late 1990s, and offers a number of innovative solutions that help some of the world’s best-known brands make smarter, faster decisions about their supply chain operations.

Its flagship software, Supply Chain Guru, is used for optimizing and simulating supply chain network operations and modeling potential changes based on performance, costs and risks. Last year, LLamasoft released Supply Chain Guru X, the newest generation of its software, which enables companies to build living models of their end-to-end supply chains. Customers can easily visualize inefficiencies, optimize for significant improvements in cost, service and risk, and test hundreds of potential scenarios for continuous supply chain improvement and innovation. Also released was Demand Guru, a new solution that empowers companies to improve their supply chain design and strategic business initiatives by incorporating powerful causative demand modeling.

In 2012, LLamasoft raised $6 million in funding, led by MK Capital. Nike also became a strategic investment partner that year, taking a minority share in October. Jumping forward to 2015, LLamasoft had a big year – acquiring IBM’s LogicTools supply chain applications business, raising $50 million in Series B funding from Goldman Sachs to fund expansion and R&D, and acquiring South Africa-based Barloworld.

Several months ago, TPG Capital, the investment group behind companies like Uber, McAfee and Airbnb, invested over $200 million in LLamasoft after seeing great promise in the company and fully understanding the value its technology delivers to customers.

Today, LLamasoft counts among its 700 customers companies such as Michael Kors, Land O’ Lakes, Johnson & Johnson, and Wayfair. The company estimates that it signs 30 to 40 new clients per quarter. When I asked Brzoznowski if he could share some of LLamasoft’s customer success stories, he pointed out a few recent examples of customer use cases including Michael Kors, U.S. Silica, Hewlett-Packard and Johnson & Johnson.

Read more at How LLamasoft Is Designing Success For Customers’ Supply Chains

What do you think about this topic? If you want to discuss anything, please send us your questions or write it in the comment box. Subscribe us to be the first one to get updates.

Related articles

CPG Supply Chains are adapting to disruption, new research finds

Posted on by

0Online shopping, new digital technologies, and increasing channel fragmentation are intensifying the pressures on US consumer packaged goods (CPG) supply chains.

There are clear steps CPG companies must take in order to prepare, according to a new report authored by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and commissioned by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA).

The report, ‘How CPG Supply Chains Are Preparing for Seismic Change’, highlights the top trends affecting CPG supply chains and the effect on CPG companies’ performance.

Among the issues addressed in the report: e-commerce sales growth, service-level performance, channel proliferation, network design, and cash management trends.

The report is based on the 2017 Supply Chain Benchmarking Study, a study of the US units of more than 30 leading CPG companies conducted jointly by BCG and GMA.

“It’s been a turbulent couple of years for the grocery industry, with major disruption and dislocation in the retail landscape,” commented Daniel Triot, senior director of the Trading Partner Alliance of GMA and the Food Marketing Institute.

“Despite the important performance gains in the supply chain in the past two years, CPG companies cannot be complacent. This report aims to provide guidance for CPG companies looking to harness new digital technologies and trends to support continued growth.”

Over the next two years, half the growth in North American grocery sales will come from e-commerce. But only 6% of CPG companies have a dedicated e-commerce supply chain team, and only 3% are able to fully track sales by channel.

Read more at CPG Supply Chains are adapting to disruption, new research finds

If you have any questions, post it at the comment box or contact us for information. Subscribe to get updates in your inbox.

Related articles