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. …
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Tag Archives: supply chain network design
Supply chain network design is a necessary regular activity for any company who views competitive strategy in supply chains as an important pillar of their business. This is even more true when supply chain leaders are looking to make a decision that may change the course of their business forever. As my colleague, Jim Piermarini, …
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As a technologist, I’ve always been interested in the behind-the-scenes workings that make our programs do what we want them to. How does Siri know when to listen to us and how to respond? How is Waze able to give us traffic tips on the fly? The answer lays in smart programming, which is often …
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Supply chain network design is all about creating a model of your existing supply chain network and then adding in alternative possibilities to evaluate them analytically. This gives business leaders a relatively easy, fact-based way to look at how effective their current supply chain is and compare alternative configurations. When done effectively, smart supply chain …
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Supply chain sustainability sounds like it should be table stakes for our industry. However, rapidly changing business conditions often cause organizations to suffer from unplanned heavy demand and unrealistic deadlines. This causes upstream suppliers to request overtime from their resources to meet demand surge. Even though downstream organizations follow sustainability guidelines, high demands and local …
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Supply chain network models are powerful tools that help organizations make critical decisions. These decisions have a significant impact on growth plans, customer service and overall cost to serve. Therefore, the analytical process to develop and run these models is rigorous and very data intensive. This analytical rigor brings a level of confidence to the …
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Supply chain network optimization and design initiatives require trading off many aspects of the supply chain: manufacturing, transportation, warehousing and distribution, inventory and customer service. Organizations need to make sense of internal and external data, collect input, reach alignment and coordinate a realistic but impactful roll out. It is a lot of work, and most …
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Identifying Which Customers Not to Serve!
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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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Are you looking for a partner in your Supply Chain Network Design journey? The newest versions of Supply Chain Network Design (SCND) tools have been expanded: businesses can now analyze not just their own operations, but also the sum of multiple supply chains in the competitive marketplace, creating a new way to integrate competitive risk …
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Sometimes the answer to “How difficult can it be?” is more difficult than you were prepared for! Okay, I have the Network Optimization Software…Now what? They didn’t tell me how many different choices I’d have to make to put this thing together. Assembling your optimal supply chain starts with modeling your supply chain. It’s important …
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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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