The Business of improving a Supply Chain is a similar experience to digging a French drain. My 1730 New England farmhouse sits a bit downhill from my driveway, and when it rains hard, or for long periods, the water will follow the slope from this watershed and make its way into my cellar. I have …
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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 …
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Recently, I was reading the current issue of Cornell Engineering Magazine. In it, they had a profile of an alumnus named Howard Morgan. Mr. Morgan is a 1968 Ph.D. graduate of Cornell and a venture capitalist. You can read the article in Cornell Engineering Magazine here. One paragraph in particular struck me. It reads: “[Mr. …
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Profit Point uses proprietary mathematical optimization tools to model your supply chain and identify options that will drive improvement in key areas. We are the Supply Chain Network Optimization Experts.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, CFOs are cutting back on Excel Spreadsheets, because they have not kept up with the demands of contemporary corporate financial units. “The mood that prevails is that people are spending too much of their time importing and exporting and manipulating data. They want their employees to focus …
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Recently I was at an event where I knew the host and her family but not too many other people. As the guests introduced themselves to each other, the dreaded question came up. What do you do? I have come to dread this question. For the first part of my career, my answer was …
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Tardigrades, which are often called water bears, are nearly microscopic. Although they are usually water dwelling creatures, they can be found in Antarctic ice, ocean depths of 14,000 feet and in the Himalayas at a height of 20,000 ft. They can survive just about anywhere, including outer space. Fossils of tardigrades have been found in …
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Recently Mark Rockey posted a blog about the 5 characteristics of Advanced Production Scheduling Tools. Around the same time, I was asked by a client about the differences between SAP (PPDS) and Aspen Plant Scheduler (SCM/MIMI) and I thought this would be a good follow-up to Mark’s blog. Here is what we at Profit Point …
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There are many production scheduling tools available commercially. Some are more tailored to specific environments (such as a specific type of manufacturing) while others are applicable to a wide range of applications. When we talk about Advanced Production Scheduling Tools, there are certain characteristics that we have in mind including the following: 1) Both materials …
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Last weekend I met up with some DBA friends for lunch. Try as you might, the conversation always seems to return to talking shop and soon we were discussing the differences between data partitioning and sharding. There seems to always be a lot of conflicting opinions on this topic, so I felt it was worthy …
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I’ve had the pleasure to live and work in the Napa Valley since 2010 in various Supply Chain roles. On an unseasonably warm Sunday night, I went to bed and woke up to complete darkness at around 5:30 am. As I pieced together what was happening, I came to realize that extremely high winds had …
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Last summer we were having dinner with some friends. One of the people at the table worked for DineEquity, the parent company of Applebee’s. He proceeded to tell us about the current initiative to redo the cooking equipment in all Applebee restaurants with wood-fired grills. They were going to introduce wood fired steak, chicken, pork …
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