Inventory Analysis: Affordable, Available, Actionable

Inventory Analysis: Affordable, Available, Actionable

For any manufacturer or distributor, the problem with inventory management is easily stated. Simply put, there’s often too much of the stuff that isn’t selling—and far too little of the stuff that is selling.

The result? Disappointed customers, stock-outs and lost sales—combined with shelves groaning with inventory that nobody wants.

Put like that, the mismatch sounds almost comic. But to companies wrestling with just this problem, it’s a quandary that’s very real, and far from laughable.

For in today’s business climate, lost sales and disappointed would-be customers can be very bad news indeed. What’s more, the financial drain of financing unwanted inventory can be crippling. Because while banks are admittedly more willing to lend than they were at the height of the financial crisis, borrowing limits are tight, and terms are expensive.

So what’s to be done?

Inventory analysis: cheaper than ERP, easier than best-of-breed.

Fancy inventory optimization algorithms can help, of course. So can advanced forecasting techniques.
The latter help you to more accurately predict the customer demand that you’ll face; the former help you to better meet those customer demands with available stock.

Inventory analysis: under control, faster and cheaper.

Which is why, of course, so many manufacturers and distributors—especially those with elderly or partially-implemented ERP systems—try the ‘sticking plaster’ approach of spreadsheet-based analysis.

Inventory analysis: self-financing actionable insights.

At Matillion, we know that most of our customers come to us wanting a low-cost, effective Cloud BI solution that can be implemented quickly. And usually, financial reporting and analysis is fairly high on their agendas.

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Five factors of supply chain sustainability

The five factors of supply chain sustainability

Leadership, empowerment and sharing success stories are among the attributes required to implement sustainable procurement.

That’s according to a panel of experts who shared their top tips at the Institute for Supply Management annual conference in Las Vegas, US last week. The advice included:

  1. Sustainability champions : “Find out who’s passionate about this in your organisation and ask them to be champions.”
  2. Leadership : “You are all leaders to your supply chain, they’re looking to you and your actions and expectations.”
  3. Empowerment : “If you give people a ladder to execute in their own fashion they will take ownership of it.”
  4. Success : “Nothing sells better than success, so we recognise and reward success.”
  5. Metrics : “If you can communicate what you [have done], it is really a powerful story.”

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FusionOps Unveils LiveAnalytics for Supply Chain Data

FusionOps Unveils LiveAnalytics for Supply Chain Data

FusionOps, a supply chain analytics company that provides a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) application, has launched LiveAnalytics for supply chain data. LiveAnalytics uses images and live metrics to create infographics for supply chain processes and workflows.

The FusionOps application allows businesses to create new analytics from scratch. In addition, the application offers thousands of configurable analytics, metrics and tickers, FusionOps said.

LiveAnalytics leverages FusionOps’ interactive, root-cause analysis across the supply chain. FusionOps said LiveAnalytics users can visualize changes in their supply chains in real-time and evaluate data from all functional areas to become more efficient.

Some of LiveAnalytics’ features include:

  1. Alerts – When alerts are triggered, users are notified via email about supply chain events in real-time.
  2. Key performance indicator (KPI) dictionary – The new KPI dictionary explains pre-built and company-specific metrics.
  3. Personalized navigation – Users can access thousands of dashboards, KPIs and reports directly from LiveAnalytics’ main navigation and “Favorites” menus.

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80 per cent of supply chain managers don’t believe their supply chain enables business strategy

80 per cent of supply chain managers don’t believe their supply chain enables business strategy

Some eight out of 10 supply chain managers do not see their supply chain as an “enabler of business strategies” within their organisation, according to a survey.

The poll, conducted by Hitachi Consulting, also found 55 per cent do not regard their business’s supply chain as a “fundamental source of business value and competitive advantage” and 29 per cent see it as “purely an operational function”.

Cathy Johnson, vice president at Hitachi Consulting, said: “These figures are far from reassuring. For the most part, it seems that senior executives understand the strategic importance of the supply chain, yet the managers who deal with the supply chain on a day-to-day basis do not.

“A supply chain that doesn’t support the overarching business strategy, and which doesn’t deliver competitive edge – and which isn’t going to deliver a material change in performance over the next five years – is clearly not a desirable asset.”

The survey, involving 100 supply chain managers and directors from nine European countries, revealed almost half did not believe their organisation’s supply chain would deliver increased profitability over the next five years, just a third believed it would deliver an improved customer experience over the same period, and half did not think it would deliver a “reduced working capital requirement”.

What is your opinion? Write it below in the comment or contact us for discussion.

Zara’s Secret To Success: The New Science Of Retailing

English: Zara in Oxford

English: Zara in Oxford (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Zara’s Secret To Success: The New Science Of Retailing

In the book there are many good examples of successful strategies. Companies like Abercrombie & Fitch, Best Buy, Joseph A. Banks, Borders, National Bicycle, Walmart, World and many others, are highlighted.    I particularly liked the discussion of Zara, the fast expanding, fashion-right, company headquartered in the remote northwest corner of Spain in La Coruna.  The founder – Amancio Ortega founded Zara in 1975 in order to better understand world markets for his fashion merchandise. A decade later he formed Inditex as a parent company for Zara, as well as several other retail concepts and suppliers that he had built.

While Zara’s original stores were in Spain, today it has stores throughout Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia. The company opened their first store in Russia on August 28, 2013. In fiscal 2012 Inditex reported total sales of € 15.9 Billion ($20.7 Billion); Zara represented 66% of total sales or €10.5 Billion ($13.6 Billion) with 120 stores world-wide. Other, smaller, divisions include Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and Uterque.

Zara has focused teams of designers and product managers. They oversee the design, sourcing and production of a specific classification such as dresses or women’s sportswear.  They are responsible for both the initial collection and in-season response. Importantly to its success, Zara produces where it sells. This achieves short lead times for new fashion ideas.

Zara has certainly revolutionized the fashion industry in terms of the supply chain management. If you want to learn more about supply chain management, feel free to drop us a message.

Coca-Cola refreshes sustainable sourcing goals

Coca-Cola refreshes sustainable sourcing goals

Coca-Cola has increased efforts to make its supply chain more sustainable by announcing a series of new targets in the areas of sourcing, water use and carbon dioxide emissions.

The drinks producer, which is working with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on its sustainability programme, announced a target of improving water efficiency by 25 per cent among a series of sustainability goals for 2020. It also pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions of its drinks by a quarter and to work with the WWF to ensure that materials for its PlantBottle, which is manufactured entirely from plant materials, are sourced sustainably.

Other additions to its 2020 sustainability strategy include working to ensure key ingredients, such as sugar cane, mango and pulp and paper are sourced sustainably and replenishing 100 per cent of the water expended through its operations. It also aims to reach a 75 per cent recovery rate on the bottles and cans it sells in developed markets.

Coca-cola’s strategy is one of many good examples about how supply chain management is utilized into operations. If you are interested in how to improve your supply chain management, feel free to contact us.

 

New Supply Chain Trend: Amazon Moving In With Manufacturers

Moving In With Manufacturers, Amazon Delivers A New Approach

Amazon initiates a new trend in supply chain management by handling 3PL (3rd Party Logistics) for its manufacturers in order to reduce the Time-To-Delivery (TTD) much shorter between manufacturers and consumers.

Today, most 3PLs are already hosting market place by providing logistics service at their distribution centers (DCs). Vendors and manufacturers are sending their goods to those DCs and the 3PLs handle the logistics for the vendors and manufacturers from those DCs. Amazon moves the 3PL services further to the “upstream” of its supply chain by moving the 3PL services from its DCs much closer to its manufacturers. This approach is quite different from Wal-Mart‘s logistics strategy, which is a centralized 3PL.

The benefit of the new distributed 3PL approach is worth watching. If you are interested in how to innovate your logistics operations, feel free to contact us.

The Beer Game

The Beer Game

A rite of passage for new Sloan MBA students provides lessons in systems thinking.

Thursday, August 29, 1:00 p.m.
It is a miserably muggy afternoon in Cambridge as the incoming class of the MIT Sloan School of Management—roughly 400 students from 41 countries—files into a second-floor ballroom at the Kendall Square Marriott. They are here to play the Beer Game, a Sloan orientation tradition. Unfortunately given the weather, the Beer Game does not involve drinking cool beverages.

“There is no actual beer in the Beer Game,” says John Sterman, the Sloan professor who is overseeing the proceedings for the 25th consecutive year.

Rather, the Beer Game is a table game, developed in the late 1950s by digital computing pioneer and Sloan professor Jay Forrester, SM ’45. Played with pen, paper, printed plastic tablecloths, and poker chips, it simulates the supply chain of the beer industry. In so doing, it illuminates aspects of system dynamics, a signature mode of MIT thought: it illustrates the nonlinear complexities of supply chains and the way individuals are circumscribed by the systems in which they act.

All that will be explained in a class-wide debriefing Sterman will conduct after the game. For now, it’s game on, and as a writer for MIT News, I’ve been invited by Sterman to play this year. I go to one of the 47 tables where students are randomly seating themselves in teams of eight, introduce myself to my seven teammates (MBA candidates from India, Peru, and the United States), and listen to Sterman explain the rules.

Beer game simulates the reality of supply chain management. If you are interested in knowing more about supply chain management, feel free to contactus.

 

More iPhone 5c Supply Chain Rumors

More iPhone 5c Supply Chain Rumors

This article talks about a major challenge to supply chain planning. To have ample supply of iPhone 5s and 5c, how many does Apple need to plan and what is the production mix between the 2 models?

Steve Jobs‘ idea was to take the simple route by planning for one iPhone model only and focused on getting the best product to consumers. Tim Cook takes a different but traditional approach by introducing two models instead of one. He hope a cheaper model of 5c would attract more buyers, at least from the Asia. At least, this what the production plan tells us at the moment. The production plans for more 5c than 5s.

Contrary to what Tim expected, consumers would rather spend money buying the expense model 5s with new technology than buying the cheaper model 5c with previous generation of technology. This is why Apple needs to dramatically decrease 5c production and increase 5s production. This shows a supply chain planning mistake. It totally mis-calculates consumer demand by having a wrong product mix.

Check out this article for the challenges that Apple is facing and how we can help you to manage your supply chain.