Category Archives: Supply Chain Management

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.

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

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3 Open Source Tools for Supply Chain Management

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If you manage a business which deals with physical goods, supply chain management is an important part of your business process. Whether you’re running a tiny Etsy store with just a few customers, or a Fortune 500 manufacturer or retailer with thousands of products and millions of customers worldwide, it’s important for you to have a close understanding of your inventory and the parts and raw materials you need to make your products.

Keeping track of physical items, suppliers, customers, and all of the many moving parts associated with each can greatly benefit from, and in some cases be totally dependent on specialized software to help you manage these workflows. In this article, we’ll take a look at some free and open source software options for supply chain management, and some of the features of each.

Supply chain management goes a little further than just inventory management. It can help you keep track of the flow of goods, to reduce costs, and help plan scenarios in which the supply chain could change. It can help you to keep track of compliance issues, whether these fall under the umbrella of legal requirements, quality minimums, or social and environmental responsibility. It can help you plan the minimum supply to keep on hand, and make smart decisions about order quantities and delivery times.

Because of their nature, a good deal of supply chain management software is bundled with other similar software, such as customer relationship managers and enterprise resource planning tools. So when making a decision about what tool is best for your organization, you may wish to consider integration with other tools as a part of your decision making criteria.

Read more at 3 Open Source Tools for Supply Chain Management

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2016: The Year of Wearable Technology in the Supply Chain

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Wearable technology, and the use of cloud software, will become much more widespread across the industry in 2016. The ability to access and input data in real time is the key way in which suppliers will be able to meet the stringent demands of supermarkets.

The adoption of cloud software will be aided by the fact that the price of good quality laptops has fallen below £200, with good quality tablets available for under £50. These prices, which may fall even further in 2016, mean the bar to entry associated with cloud technology in the supply chain has been significantly lowered.

With the ability to put these powerful devices in the hands of everyone, 2015 required us at Linkfresh to think about making core lines of business software available across these devices. That sea change has laid the foundations for what we will see in the industry in 2016.

Supermarkets are pushing suppliers harder than ever, a situation which looks certain to continue throughout the coming year. Dealing with this pressure is the biggest challenge the industry faces.

Read more at 2016: the year of wearable technology in the supply chain

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Global supply chain threatened by terror and flow of migrants

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Supply chains are suffering a rise in costs and multiple disruptions due to the reintroduction of border controls in Europe and the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East.

The Charted Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) – with a presence in 150 different countries – confirms that ISIS activity and Russia’s rigid attitude in world politics have contributed to the heightened risk.

Meanwhile, the migrant crisis is making some European countries close their borders, as is happening in Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. Crossing the border in these countries can take up to 90 minutes, while other activities such as the transport of livestock have stopped entirely for several days in the past month.

This supply chain issue has caused the delivery prices for some German companies to rise by as much as 10 per cent and has increased the risk of the supply chains in other several countries of the Middle East and North Africa, such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey and Tunisia.

Read more at Global supply chain threatened by terror and flow of migrants

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Communicating sustainability in the supply chain: Five top tips

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The sustainability of modern supply chains is under scrutiny from all angles, with consumers, manufacturers, processors and farmers all keen to ensure affordability and profitability. With such tensions in the chain, how can ‘the middle man’ deliver on demands of global customers and mobilise staff in the changing landscape of ever-higher stakeholder expectations?

1 – Don’t over-promise

It’s very easy to get carried away and over-promise, but sustainability targets should never be divorced from your basic business principles. Road-test promises internally before they are communicated to the outside world – especially when they are made within customer partnerships.

2 – Don’t alienate colleagues

No sustainability targets can be achieved by the sustainability team alone. We need our colleagues to deliver on our promises. However, sustainability has developed its own jargon-filled language which tends to alienate those working outside of it – take the term ‘capacity building’. While it means giving people the necessary knowledge and skills to shape their own development, I’ve had numerous instances where colleagues thought we were talking about building extra factory processing volume or similar!

3 – Don’t doubt yourself

There is a growing pressure from customers, shareholders and NGOs to comply with regulated sustainability schemes. While external certification bodies, such as FairTrade and Rainforest Alliance, act as third party auditors and provide reassurance to customers, it is often true that no-one knows your business better than yourself. We believe that in addition to third party certification, there is a role for companies to develop verification schemes that are independently audited.

4 – Don’t collect data for data’s sake

Don’t get obsessed by the metrics without knowing why you’re collecting them or how to usefully act upon them. Focus on impact, insight, outcomes and improvement, not the glory of numbers.

5 – Don’t go it alone

Companies don’t operate in isolation. There is a paradigm shift towards collaboration, and the nature of where and how to compete is being re-framed. The CEO of a global telecoms company once said that his biggest business regret was wasting over a decade and billions of pounds’ investment before he discussed sharing infrastructure such as masts with his competitors.

Read more at Communicating sustainability in the supply chain: Five top tips

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Cloud Solutions for Logistics and Supply Chain Management Software

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Logen Solutions, a software company that specializes in logistics efficiency software, released CubeMaster Online, a comprehensive cloud solution for logistics and software for supply chain management.

CubeMaster Online is a load plan and optimization software, and palletizing and packaging design software that calculates the optimal loads for pallets, trucks, trailers, and sea and air containers. Companies can help reduce 5 to 20 percent of the trucks or container loads used. This can result in significant time and cost savings for many companies.

CubeMaster Online helps facilitate collaboration with teams working together in distribution areas. This collaboration feature presents logistics, engineering, marketing, management and distribution centers with an easy, efficient way to share and control load planning and execution across various geographical areas.

CubeMaster Mobile provides mobile pages built on HTML 5, which enables connection to any service with any mobile devices. This mobile version is designed to run on mobile devices such as iOS and Android tablets and smartphones.

CubeMaster Web Service is the most recent technology to enable the integration of CubeMaster Online with customer applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management systems (TMS) at the application level. It allows the remote applications written by ASP, APS.NET, Java, PHP and SAP to call remotely the application program interfaces (APIs) served by the CubeMaster Online server.

Read more at Cloud Solutions for Logistics and Supply Chain Management Software

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10 ways big data is revolutionising supply chain management

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Big data is providing supplier networks with greater data accuracy, clarity, and insights, leading to more contextual intelligence shared across supply chains.

Forward-thinking manufacturers are orchestrating 80% or more of their supplier network activity outside their four walls, using big data and cloud-based technologies to get beyond the constraints of legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems. For manufacturers whose business models are based on rapid product lifecycles and speed, legacy ERP systems are a bottleneck. Designed for delivering order, shipment and transactional data, these systems aren’t capable of scaling to meet the challenges supply chains face today.

Choosing to compete on accuracy, speed and quality forces supplier networks to get to a level of contextual intelligence not possible with legacy ERP and SCM systems. While many companies today haven’t yet adopted big data into their supply chain operations, these ten factors taken together will be the catalyst that get many moving on their journey.

The ten ways big data is revolutionising supply chain management include:

  1. The scale, scope and depth of data supply chains are generating today is accelerating, providing ample data sets to drive contextual intelligence.
  2. Enabling more complex supplier networks that focus on knowledge sharing and collaboration as the value-add over just completing transactions.
  3. Big data and advanced analytics are being integrated into optimisation tools, demand forecasting, integrated business planning and supplier collaboration & risk analytics at a quickening pace.
  4. Big data and advanced analytics are being integrated into optimisation tools, demand forecasting, integrated business planning and supplier collaboration & risk analytics at a quickening pace.
  5. Using geoanalytics based on big data to merge and optimise delivery networks.
  6. Big data is having an impact on organizations’ reaction time to supply chain issues (41%), increased supply chain efficiency of 10% or greater (36%), and greater integration across the supply chain (36%).
  7. Embedding big data analytics in operations leads to a 4.25x improvement in order-to-cycle delivery times, and a 2.6x improvement in supply chain efficiency of 10% or greater.
  8. Greater contextual intelligence of how supply chain tactics, strategies and operations are influencing financial objectives.
  9. Traceability and recalls are by nature data-intensive, making big data’s contribution potentially significant.
  10. Increasing supplier quality from supplier audit to inbound inspection and final assembly with big data.

Read more at 10 ways big data is revolutionising supply chain management

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China’s supply chain plan could pose threat to Taiwan

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A plan laid out by Chinese authorities to cultivate a domestic supply chain for the country’s high-tech manufacturing sector is expected to pose a serious threat to Taiwanese companies, government sources said Saturday.

In voicing the concerns, Ministry of Economic Affairs sources said China’s efforts to help its own high-tech supply chain flourish to lower dependence on imported parts have already reduced China’s trade dependence on Taiwan.

The plan unveiled by Beijing in May to create a manufacturing revolution underpinned by smart technologies over the next 10 years could deal a further blow to Taiwan’s exports, they said.

The latest plan for the mainland to grow its own high-tech sector, called “Made In China 2015,” takes aim at various sectors, including the information technology, and puts a heavy emphasis on the semiconductor segment.

According to figures compiled by the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT), the ratio of China’s imports from Taiwan to total imports fell to 7.76 percent in 2014, from 11.3 percent in 2005.

Read more at China’s supply chain plan could pose threat to Taiwan

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4 ways retailers can improve supply chain management

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Retailers and their suppliers are under more pressure than ever before to deliver more goods to more destinations faster.

To stay competitive, “retailers need to know where things are at all times so they can redirect shipments, rebalance inventories and respond to new demands on the fly,” says Rich Becks, general manager, Industry Value Chains, E2open, which delivers cloud-based supply chain collaboration solutions.

And if there is a problem with their supply chain, and they can’t get products to stores and/or consumers, retailers (and their suppliers) risk losing customers.

So what steps can, and should, retailers take to make sure their supply chain operations are running smoothly? Following are four suggestions from retail supply chain experts.

1. Use cloud-based software that can track and manage inventory in real time.

“Retailers struggle to balance uncertain consumer behavior and long, complex supply chains,” explains Kurt Cavano, vice chairman & CSO, GT Nexus, a supply chain technology company.

2. Use source tagging and RFID to keep track of inventory and stock levels.

“To improve supply chain management from the moment product leaves the manufacturer’s warehouse all the way through to the point-of-purchase, retailers should deploy a source tagging solution,” says Steve Sell, director, North America Marketing, Retail Practice, Tyco Integrated Security.

3. Become a part of a B2B e-procurement network.

“B2B [or e-procurement] networks can help companies predict supply chain disruptions and act quickly to adapt business processes,” says Sundar Kamakshisundaram, vice president, Procurement and Business Network Solutions, Ariba, an SAP company.

4. Make sure your marketing and supply chain teams are in sync.

“When executing a promotion, a lot of retailers overlook the alignment of the supply chain and marketing teams, which is crucial [if you want] to successfully launch a promotion,” says Pat Sullivan, senior vice president, Promotions Management, HAVI Global Solutions, a consulting company.

Read more at 4 ways retailers can improve supply chain management

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Supply Chain Analytics: How Manufacturers Can Get The Most Value Out Of Their Automated Data Capture Technology

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There are a prolific amount of data sets and data sources available that can help overcome the aforementioned challenges. The problem is that “big data” is coming in from so many varied sources, and manufacturers simply do not know what to do with it or how to use it. The answer lies in supply chain analytics. With the right analytical tools, manufacturers can obtain actionable, meaningful, and supported insight from available data in order to make better business decisions. When it comes to AIDC, supply chain analytics are most useful in two chief areas: device optimization (the technology itself) and labor management (those who are using the technology).

AIDC Device Optimization

With supply chain analytics, manufacturers can receive timely and relevant feedback about their AIDC platform to determine how the technology is performing – feedback beyond what is provided by a typical Mobile Device Management solution. Through this insight, users can better understand the underlying causes of inefficiencies, identify areas for continuous improvement, perform predictive analysis, and more. For example, through dashboard and reporting tools, manufacturers can easily see device utilization data to determine user adoption rates. They can monitor battery performance of their devices in the field to prevent downtime. Or, they can even make sure that the right tools are available at the right time. As a result, manufacturers can optimize their mobile deployments to attain additional ROI.

Labor Management

The second component to this equation involves labor management. Using supply chain analytics, it is possible to match the right tools with the right people, and the right people with the work. Analytics platforms accomplish this by gauging and managing the labor resources that use the technology in terms of measurement of activity benchmarking, engineered labor standards, and dashboard reporting. These tools take into consideration production data (volume), integrated with labor, cost, customers, and time data.

Achieving Analytics Success

Supply chain analytics tools can provide practical and fully actionable (fact-based decision making) information to help optimize the supply chain from an AIDC and human capital standpoint. Along with the right AIDC tools and support organization behind those tools, supply chain analytics can assist in driving more revenue, reducing your cost structure and improving the experience of your customers and your workforce. Yet, this is only a piece of the supply chain analytics puzzle. Looking forward, manufacturers will continue to extend the capabilities of analytics tools to gain insight into the overall performance of the manufacturing facility. With the influx of the Internet of Things (IoT), more data points are available than ever before, which allows manufacturers to gauge the efficiency of a particular production line or overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

Read more at Supply Chain Analytics: How Manufacturers Can Get The Most Value Out Of Their Automated Data Capture Technology

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