All posts by Alan Kosansky

Alan Kosansky has pioneered the application of advanced analytic techniques to transportation procurement, dynamic scheduling, supply chain management and financial optimization.

Supply Chain Trends: Our 2021 Recap and 2022 Predictions

What we hoped would be a short-term disruption in 2020 has become the new long-term reality. The world we live in is far less predictable. Supply chains are under pressure. As we have seen, disruptions can happen anywhere in our supply chains due to port congestion, warehouse staff shortages, weather-related shutdowns, or raw material uncertainty. …
Read more

Manufacturing Network Optimization: How to Get the Most From Your Value Chain

Modern technology has accelerated the rate of change in our world and allowed us to operate more effectively and with lower costs. Along with this rapid change, manufacturing network optimization becomes even more nuanced and more essential. Retooling production networks to strike a new balance between cost optimization, remaining competitive and increasing resilience where it …
Read more

Designing Supply Chain Network: 5 Steps for Optimization

Analyse your Supply Chain Network.
Why should I be designing my supply chain network? You’re patting yourself on the back. You’ve sorted through the Marine Shipping chaos. In the face of volatile Marine Transportation rates, you’ve managed to negotiate great prices to transport your North American produced bulk liquid via tank containers to ten Pacific region countries. The contracts are …
Read more

Retaining Supply Chain Expertise

institutional knowledge
The biggest challenge organizations face is retaining expertise and organizational knowledge.  This may be hard to fathom, but in the 29 years I have been helping supply chain and business organizations make better decisions, it is surprising how often the groups re-visit the same decisions over again.  Key roles are turning over more quickly, and …
Read more

Supply Chain Software: Is your solution scalable?

Supply Chain Software Scalable
Do you need to use one of the big Supply Chain Management software packages to have a scalable solution that covers all your businesses and regions? Many of the larger software vendors insist that the answer is “Yes”. Their argument goes something like this: “Customized solutions may fit your business requirements and competitive advantage needs …
Read more

Can Standardization and Customization Co-exist?

Aspen Supply Chain Suite (SCM)
When selecting enabling software for supply chain scheduling and planning, there are typically two competing forces:  On one hand, there is a strong push for standardization, typically driven by the IT organization. On the other hand, there is an equally strong need for flexibility and targeted solutions that capture the unique aspects and requirements of …
Read more

Supply Chain as a Competitive Advantage – Design it the Right Way

Most leading companies perform supply chain network design analysis to define the structure of their supply chain as well as the key operations that will be performed at each location in the resulting network. The analysis includes suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses and distributors. In fact, a number of Fortune 100 companies require such analysis before approving capital …
Read more

The Future of Supply Chain Network Design

Future of Supply Chain Network Design
Profit Point’s recent article in Industry Today, “The Future of Supply Chain Network Design,” describes how to fully leverage the new advances in a traditional supply chain optimization process to include not only your internal supply chain, but the supply chains of your competitors, as well. Supply chain network design optimization tools have become well …
Read more

Search