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Huawei’s European factory to boost supply chain efficiency

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Huawei's European factory to boost supply chain efficiency

The China-based tech giants, Huawei, is set to build a factory in France to produce 4G and 5G wireless equipment to accelerate supply chain efficiency.

According to analysts, the new facility will allow Huawei easier access to its telecommunications carriers in Europe, while also easing concerns over alleged spying for China’s government.

Stéphane Téral, executive director of telecommunications research at IHS Markit, commented: “At this stage of the mobile industry, it is critical for Huawei to have a radio communications factory somewhere in Europe to relieve the pressure on the existing ones in China. “We clearly see firsthand the disruption the coronavirus crisis is creating.”

It is expected that the factory will produce €1bn worth of products annually, while also creating 500 jobs.

It is thought that the company chose France due to the country’s ideal geographic position, mature industrial infrastructure as well as its highly educated talent pool. Peter Liu, vice-president analyst at Gartner, said: “The European facility will improve Huawei’s efficiency because the company will be able to integrate itself into the supply chain in Europe.”

The news follows Huawei’s launch of its 5G Innovation and Experience Centre in London which encourages increased collaboration between businesses and innovators in the development of 5G ecosystems. Victor Zhang, Vice-President of Huawei, added: “With the opening of our 5G Innovation and Experience Centre in London we, as a leader of 5G, are taking another important step. What we have opened today will enable true collaboration amongst UK businesses and technologists and showcase the huge potential of 5G applications for both the private and business sectors.”

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The Growing Maturity Of Blockchain

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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.

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2017 Parcel Express Roundtable: Paying for peak performance

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It can be hard to believe that very much happens in a year, but that theory is put to the test when it comes to the parcel express market.

In fact, over the past 12 months we’ve seen major changes in pricing from the parcel duopoly of FedEx and UPS; the accelerated emergence of regional parcel players; and don’t forget we’re all watching the increasing power and reach of e-commerce giant Amazon as it grows its own delivery capabilities globally.

These developments require parcel shippers to do whatever it takes to stay on top of their parcel game from both a financial and operational perspective. To help them along, Logistics Management has gathered Jerry Hempstead, president of Hempstead Consulting, a parcel advisory firm; David Ross, transportation and logistics director at investment firm Stifel; and Rob Martinez, president and CEO at Shipware, an audit and parcel consulting services company.

Over the next few pages, our experts offer their insight into what’s driving parcel market trends and offers some practical advice for how shippers need to re-adjust to ever-changing market conditions.

Logistics Management (LM): How would you describe today’s parcel marketplace?

Jerry Hempstead: All of the parcel carriers are doing well in volume and earnings—even the USPS is making money if you back out the Congressional mandates. And it’s clear that e-commerce is driving the volumes. To top it off, service levels this year are at record levels and are predictable and consistent.

My observation is that there’s no statistical difference between the service performance offered by FedEx and UPS across a year’s worth of activity, although FedEx offers a faster delivery on ground to about 25% more city pairs than UPS. This pressure on speeding up the promise and refining the networks to make the magic happen will only improve the consumer experience in parcel services.

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The Future Of Performance Management Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

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In 2013, CEB research found that 86% of organizations had recently made significant changes to their performance management system, or were planning to. In 2014, a Deloitte survey found that 58% percent of companies surveyed did not think performance management was an effective use of time, and many media outlets jumped on the opportunity to air their grievances.

Finally, the rising wave of discontent seemed to crash in 2015, as a slew of large organizations like GE, Accenture, Netflix, and Adobe all scrapped their age-old annual performance management processes in favor of more continuous feedback systems. And many others followed suit.

But, was it the right move for everyone?

Last summer, I wrote an article on this topic myself, urging business leaders to really consider the implications of following these organizations. The issue, in my opinion, is not that these organizations did something wrong. Rather, the risk is that many leaders misinterpreted these stories to mean that they should abandon performance management altogether.

One thing is clear: the future of performance management in the American workplace is still very much in question.

For more insight into this important topic, I recently sat down with a handful of thought leaders in the performance management space, including Rob Ollander-Krane, Senior Director of Organizational Performance Effectiveness at Gap, Inc., Nigel Adams, Global Chief Talent Officer at Razorfish Global, and Amy Herrbold, Senior Director of Organizational Development at Kellogg. Together, we discussed the future of performance management to understand, from their perspective, why changes to this process are long overdue.

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Instagram and Pinterest are killing Gap, Abercrombie, & J. Crew

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Traditional mall retailers like Gap, J. Crew, and Abercrombie & Fitch have faced declining sales in recent years.

And the problem might be signaling something even more troublesome than dowdy apparel. Instead, it is a total shift in how teen consumers think.

Young people want to purchase experiences rather than actual stuff, and when they do buy clothing or shoes they want to be able to showcase purchases on social media.

“Their entire life, if it’s not shareable, it didn’t happen,” Marcie Merriman, Generation Z expert and executive director of growth strategy and retail innovation at Ernst & Young, said to Business of Fashion. “Experiences define them much more than the products that they buy.”

The only apparel young people want is clothing that can translate into an experience on Instagram or Snapchat.

Given their limited budgets and frugal tendencies, they’re more likely to purchase lots of clothes at fast fashion retailers, like cutting-edge Zara or cheap Forever 21, so that they have ample images to share.

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Globalization Creates New Avenues for Supply Chain Risk: riskmethods Shares its Predictions for 2016

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As part of our ongoing series on what procurement technology providers see as the biggest challenge for procurement in 2016, we recently spoke to riskmethods to hear its thoughts on the topic. Heiko Schwarz, riskmethods founder and managing director, pointed to increased external risks, globalization and regulation compliance as the main issues procurement and supply chain managers will have to tackle in the new year.

These three major trends will expose organizations to risks in 2016, Heiko said. External risk will continue to be an issue. For example, extreme weather such as rain or snow storms will expose and disrupt supply chains even more than in the past, he said. Political risks have been a growing trend for years, but will continue in 2016 as well, he added.

Globalization is also pushing enterprises to search for new suppliers in countries or regions they probably have not worked in before. Procurement’s scope in the last year has dramatically changed, going from a “domestic-centric” view to a more global one, Heiko said. Specifically, he believes we will see movement away from China as the cost of operating there continues to rise. China is no longer a low-cost sourcing country, and this is putting pressure on companies to move to new areas, places such as the northern regions of Africa, he said. This globalization push will put increase supply chain complexities in 2016.

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Accelerating Corporate Performance Management – Partnering Finance & Supply Chain

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Corporate Performance Management (CPM) activities time-consuming and labour-intensive, usually because they rely on spreadsheets, old data and outdated manual processes. With financial controls growing increasingly tighter, CPM must be performed effectively. Recently there has been talk of needing Finance and Supply Chain integration to achieve increased corporate performance with them now being key business partners.

The Corporate Performance Management Summit will take place on January 27 & 28, in Miami. Over the two days, the summit will gather over 120+ Finance & Supply Chain professionals to discuss the challenges related to internal performance management and external decision-making. There will be 25+ industry expert keynote speakers, interactive workshops with industry pioneers and over 8 hours of networking opportunities to take advantage of.

Ever considered how to execute performance management initiatives? How to manage external factors in performance management? Or even the role of the CFO in corporate strategy? The summit will explore hot topics such as these, as well as explicitly covering how CFOs can drive strategic performance through acquisitions and harness data to drive decision making. A key component to this summit will also be face-to-face communication and the opportunity to learn from your peers in a truly open environment. ‘The creation of a thought-sharing and interactive setting was always a key aspect for me when creating this summit,’ said Aaron Fraser, International Events Director. ‘I wanted to cultivate a forum for cross-pollination of ideas and advice for those involved in corporate performance management”.

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