Tag Archives: operational

Resilient Supply Chains in a Politically Uncertain World

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Resilient Supply Chains in a Politically Uncertain World

Resilient Supply Chains in a Politically Uncertain World

The Resilient Supply Chain

Today, the supply chain world iterates faster than at any other point in history. Disruptions – whether related to climate change, trade wars, or a no-deal Brexit – are a given, and black swan events aren’t surprises anymore. We know that the next event is coming fast and supply chains will have to react. So why have we not burned that understanding into our business DNA? Why are we still trying to leverage strategies developed 50 years ago and technologies unaligned to today’s needs?

What I mean is that every supply chain, everywhere, should be prepared at a moment’s notice to shut down, pivot, and spin up whatever operations it needs to, wherever it needs them. I’m of the strong opinion that if supply chain professionals reframe their thinking and look at uncertainties as opportunities then they will thrive. This thought came to me while reading an article on US trade disputes with China, or maybe it was an article on Brexit.

While I understand how conflicts arise, I have a hard time accepting why they are as adversely impactful to supply chains as they are. Contingency planning should cover for every possibility, and the overreliance on any single supplier or region is not smart business anymore. If the year was 1492 or 1839 or 1979, I could understand the desire to optimize a linear supply chain. That’s not the case today. With the advent of cloud technology and the reality of global markets – fallout from any one country’s instability or trade war can be mitigated.

Three Legs of a Resilient Supply Chain:

  1. Availability: For systems to work they need to be ON. As long as power and cloud servers exist, then a supply chain cannot be existentially threatened.
  2. Operational Flexibility and Configuration: Facilities available on a single network eliminate siloes and allow for customized configuration.
  3. More Control: Control is based on visibility, on knowing and seeing exactly where inventory is all the time.

What About Lost Goods?

Declare them lost, minimize losses, and deal with the repercussions.

Over the last two generations, western economies relied on an uncompetitive market to produce goods. Since 2010 the world has effectively been relying on an industrial monopoly.

It may have seemed like a good idea to rely on a single, cheap source of manufacturing fifty years ago. However, by choosing this path, countries damaged their own manufacturing economies.

They also exposed themselves to the exclusive possession and control of that same, supplier. That’s when the system naturally started to collapse. And that’s when the world began to see price-fixing and currency manipulation, among other signs of deterioration. What would you do if you ran a monopoly?

A dearth of suppliers is what companies are now contending with. There is no easy way out.

Read more at Resilient Supply Chains in a Politically Uncertain World

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How To Avoid a Third-Party Break in Your Supply Chain

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Your business is only as secure as the weakest link in your supply chain. A single lapse by a third-party can lead to an operational disruption, cyberattack, or compliance violation. How can you be certain that your vendors and partners are keeping up with the latest regulatory mandates, industry best practices, cybersecurity measures, and your own corporate standards?

Vendor Risk Management Should Be a Top Priority

In these days of high-profile data breaches and intensifying regulatory requirements, supply chain risk management has become a critical priority for every organization. Such programs typically encompass policies, standards, governance, and risk assessment. Vendor risk management falls under the last of these—and it’s the cornerstone of effective supply chain risk management.

Develop a Vendor Risk Policy with Teeth

Nothing gets the attention of a vendor like a withheld payment. To set the expectation that risk policy compliance is a requirement, not an option, let vendors know that no money will be released until the right boxes have been checked.

Document and Track

A supply chain risk register is essential to keep track of your vendors and their risk. Your database should provide a single source of information on which vendors have been approved and when, as well as their current risk assessment rating.

Stay Engaged During Procurement

Don’t wait until the final review of a master services agreement (MSA) to get involved. Build a strong collaborative relationship with the procurement team so you can be notified promptly when a business function submits a procurement request, and stay engaged during vendor sourcing. By getting in front of the process, you can avoid being labeled as a roadblock or deal-breaker.

Maintain, Scale, and Repeat Your Program

Running an effective vendor risk management program and managing supply chain risk in general is all about scaling and repeating. To uphold your policy and standards, be diligent and strict about annual security assessment and verification, and perform site inspections as needed depending on the severity of risks posed by a given vendor.

‘Trust But Verify’

From the earliest stages of the procurement process through onboarding, service provision, and offboarding, expectation-setting and verification should be woven through each vendor relationship. Even the most secure organizations can encounter challenges, and the best-run programs can break down—assume nothing, check everything.

Read more at How To Avoid a Third-Party Break in Your Supply Chain

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Supply chains in need of greater costing accuracy, study reveals

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Costing accuracy within supply chains must improve, a study by APICS and IMA has revealed.

The results of a survey found that supply chain managers agreed, on average, that the benefits of improving their costing systems exceed the investment.

When asked what prevents them from utilising current costing information, 44% of supply chain managers cited a lack of operational data. Instead, costing information is often reported in exclusively financial terms, making it more difficult to leverage.

According to respondents, the secondary and tertiary barriers to useful costing information are inadequate technology and software (39%) and a resistance to change by accounting and finance personnel (30%).

According to the report, there are three root causes of why supply chain professionals are not receiving adequate costing information:

An overreliance on external financial reporting systems:

Many organisations rely on externally-oriented financial accounting systems that employ oversimplified methods of costing products and services to produce information supporting internal business decision making.

Using outdated costing models:

Traditional cost accounting practices can no longer meet the challenges of today’s business environment, but are still used by many accountants.

Accounting and finance’s resistance to change:

With little pressure from managers who use accounting information to improve data accuracy and relevance, accountants are reluctant to promote new, more appropriate practices within their organisations.

The report details various steps supply chain professionals can take to improve costing systems within their organisations.

One strategy presented is for supply chain managers to strengthen their relationship with accounting and finance to foster greater information flow between the two departments.

Read more at Supply chains in need of greater costing accuracy, study reveals

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Supply Chain & Big Data ÷ Analytics = Innovation

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Google the term “advanced analytics” and you get back nearly 23 million results in less than a second.

Clearly, the use of advanced analytics is one of the hottest topics in the business press these days and is certainly top of mind among supply chain managers.

Yet, not everyone is in agreement as to just what the term means or how to deploy advanced analytics to maximum advantage.

At HP, the Strategic Planning and Modeling team has been utilizing advanced operational analytics for some 30 years to solve business problems requiring innovative approaches.

Over that time, the team has developed significant supply chain innovations such as postponement and award winning approaches to product design and product portfolio management.

Based on conversations we have with colleagues, business partners and customers at HP, three questions come up regularly – all of which this article will seek to address.

  1. What is the difference between advanced and commodity analytics?
  2. How do I drive innovation with advanced analytics?
  3. How do I set up an advanced analytics team and get started using it in my supply chain?

Advanced analytics vs. commodity analytics

So, what exactly is the difference between advanced analytics and commodity analytics? According to Bill Franks, author of “Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave,” the aim of commodity analytics is “to improve over where you’d end up without any model at all, a commodity modeling process stops when something good enough is found.”

Another definition of commodity analytics is “that which can be done with commonly available tools without any specialized knowledge of data analytics.”

The vast majority of what is being done in Excel spreadsheets throughout the analytics realm is commodity analytics.

Read more at Supply Chain & Big Data ÷ Analytics = Innovation

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SenseAware is FedEx’s Internet of Things Response to Supply Chain Optimization

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Supply chain visibility is critical to a company’s operational performance improvement, according to 63% of 149 responding companies in a survey conducted by Aberdeen Group.

“Visibility is a prerequisite to supply chain agility and responsiveness,” the report states.

And it requires tracking the location of a shipment not only at the transportation level, but also at a unit and item level.

Location tracking is good protection against shipment theft or loss, but companies need a deeper level of visibility for their products, according to FedEx.

The company’s solution? The IoT-inspired SenseAware, a sensor-based logistics solution.

SBL uses sensors to detect the shipment’s environmental conditions while warehoused or in transit and sends the data – via wireless communication devices – to a management software system where the data is collected, displayed, analyzed and stored.

It is “the basis of a powerful new central nervous system for the global supply chain,” according to FedEx.

The device is meant to provide intelligence that can help enterprises coordinate and manage product, information and financial flows.

Read more at SenseAware is FedEx’s Internet of Things Response to Supply Chain Optimization

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How visibility can drive supply chain performance

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How visibility can drive supply chain performance

At its heart, supply chain management requires a balancing of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality. Managing the true cost to serve each and every order is the aspiration to allow better negotiation and value creation across the supply chain. Customer and consumer centricity helps anticipate product and service requirements. But supply chains are becoming more extended and complex with a consequent increase in risk and the need for resilience. There are multiple data sources making it difficult to manage and measure end-to-end processes and metrics. Aligning priorities through integrated planning remains pivotal but there is an explosion of data available that needs to be incorporated and the value extracted to understand how supply-demand issues impact profit and revenue targets.

Organisations are looking to enable better and more consistent decision-making across complex processes with diverse systems and data. Many are leveraging business intelligence (BI) platforms to give them the capability to make decisions across the organisation, including environments where mobility and access to decision-critical information on the go is crucial. Putting the information in the hands of the people on the front line – those managing supply chain processes – is key to enabling decision making at the point of decision. But this requires synchronising an enormous amount of data that comes from many systems and sources in a way that it can be easily consumed by people who need to act on the insights.

Read more at How visibility can drive supply chain performance

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Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

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At its heart, supply chain management requires a balancing of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality. Managing the true cost to serve for each and every order is the aspiration to allow better negotiation and value creation across the supply chain. Customer- and consumer-centricity helps anticipate product and service requirements. Supply chains are becoming more extended and complex with a consequent increase in risk and the need for resilience. There are multiple data sources making it difficult to manage and measure end-to-end processes and metrics. Aligning priorities through integrated planning remains pivotal, but there is an explosion of data available that needs to be incorporated and the value extracted to understand how supply and demand issues impact profit and revenue targets.

New technology provides greater supply chain transparency. Strategic supplier engagement continues to be important as a way of reducing costs and mitigating risk. Effective supply chain management can be either a compelling competitive differentiator or, conversely, a source of risk, cost and poor customer service.

Organizations are looking to enable better and more consistent decision-making across complex processes with diverse systems and data. Many are leveraging business intelligence (BI) platforms to give them the capability to make decisions across the organization, including environments in which mobility and access to decision-critical information on the go is crucial. Putting the information in the hands of the people on the front line—those managing supply chain processes—is key to enabling decision-making at the point of decision. But this requires synchronizing an enormous amount of data that comes from many systems and sources in a way that it can be easily consumed by people who need to act on the insights.

Read more at Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

What do you think is important in Supply Chain Performance Management? Share your opinions with us in the comment box.

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Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

Posted on by

At its heart, supply chain management requires a balancing of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality. Managing the true cost to serve for each and every order is the aspiration to allow better negotiation and value creation across the supply chain. Customer- and consumer-centricity helps anticipate product and service requirements. Supply chains are becoming more extended and complex with a consequent increase in risk and the need for resilience. There are multiple data sources making it difficult to manage and measure end-to-end processes and metrics. Aligning priorities through integrated planning remains pivotal, but there is an explosion of data available that needs to be incorporated and the value extracted to understand how supply and demand issues impact profit and revenue targets.

New technology provides greater supply chain transparency. Strategic supplier engagement continues to be important as a way of reducing costs and mitigating risk. Effective supply chain management can be either a compelling competitive differentiator or, conversely, a source of risk, cost and poor customer service.

Organizations are looking to enable better and more consistent decision-making across complex processes with diverse systems and data. Many are leveraging business intelligence (BI) platforms to give them the capability to make decisions across the organization, including environments in which mobility and access to decision-critical information on the go is crucial. Putting the information in the hands of the people on the front line—those managing supply chain processes—is key to enabling decision-making at the point of decision. But this requires synchronizing an enormous amount of data that comes from many systems and sources in a way that it can be easily consumed by people who need to act on the insights.

Read more at Visibility Is Key when Driving Supply Chain Performance

What do you think about this topic? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box.

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