In July 2018, after the initial tariffs were implemented on China by the US, I was in Shanghai, teaching a scheduling class at a multi-national specialty chemical company. As CNN International blared in the background at lunchtime, one of my students asked what the impact of tariffs on Global Supply Chains would be. At the …
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Remotely Supporting Supply Chain Solutions to a Global Clientele Situation The day started a little earlier than most. My peaceful slumber was interrupted by unexpected cargo carried over from the previous day that seemed to roll in like waves until the largest piece crashed to shore sometime around 4:30 am. Previous Day 7:30 am: Time …
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Over the weekend I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about two subjects that don’t normally come up in the same conversation: chocolate and operations research. Everyone knows about chocolate and many of us enjoy it as a tasty treat whenever we can. However, when I refer to operations research (OR) in a …
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I recently went to a talk on Reinforcement Learning (RL) in my local .Net development group. I found the topic fascinating. For those not familiar with Reinforcement learning; it is a type of unsupervised machine learning where the algorithm uses real-world feedback over time to learn what to do. Instead of providing a set of …
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Many companies don’t yet optimize their Total Delivered Cost (TDC) in their Supply Chain. Total Delivered Cost is the real measure of how much money it takes for a company to manufacture and deliver a product. TDC gives you more accurate information than COGS, by giving you more details, and is based on the actual flow …
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Over the years as a developer, I’ve written code in many languages and many environments. Currently, my preference (and most of my work) is all in Visual Studios and C#. I like the rich feature set of Visual Studios and find C# concise, easy to read and write and versatile enough to let me control …
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There’s no doubt that the Sales and Marketing side of a business can often seem like the ‘sexy’ side of the operation. Just picture a new car showroom with all of those shiny, glitzy vehicles just waiting for a test drive. But the supply chain that put those gleaming new cars in the showroom initially …
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The combination of Project Management and Teaching is how I got my start in Supply Chain. I had project management experience from my engineering career where I was designing, building, starting up and optimizing specialty chemical plants around the USA. In 2001, I was the Technical Manager for a plant in Charlotte, NC and I …
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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.