Supply Chain Optimization

A Supply Chain Executive’s  winning formula is: Support the CEO’s vision and provide a Supply Chain vision Maintain a strategic focus including: Help create and support a Focused Business Plan Define Key Initiatives & metrics All of the above easily remembered and communicated Create  an A+ team Make sure accountability is in place Simplify and keep on simplifying Let’s first look at accountability and simplifying. In...

The nerds are taking over the world! In case you haven’t noticed the IT nerds are talking over the world. Marc Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire on the planet, Bill Gates has been one the richest people in the world for as long as I can remember. More and more App creators are running billion dollar companies.  IT is now embedded in not only our lives but everything a corporation does from running business processes, developing...

“Move a thousand people forward a foot at a time, rather than moving one person forward by a thousand feet” In 2007, when JetBlue left hundreds of passengers stranded on nine planes for over ten hours during an ice storm, they knew they had to make colossal business changes. They made those changes by taking a day to map out their bad weather operations on Post-It notes, identifying one thousand pain points. That’s right… One...

I’ve worked on many major projects and here are the best lessons learned. Don’t budget so many projects in the New Year that you can’t deliver them. I worked at one pharmaceutical company and there were a limited amount of projects driven by a Project Officer and designed to fit the team’s work throughout the year. One project focused on streamlining the SAP Planning and Procurement exception messages. This one project contributed to...

Gartner votes Apple as the top supply chain for 2013. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook both oversaw Apples Supply Chain. “When Cook took over the supply chain, he cut the number of component suppliers from 100 to 24, in a move to force the companies to compete for Apple’s business. Cook then shut down 10 of the 19 company warehouses to limit overstocking, and by September 1998 inventory was down from a month to only six days” Your...

If you want to stand out, don’t be different. Be outstanding. – Meredith West In my last article I wrote about tough lessons learned while attaining World Class S&OP (Sales and Operations) certification. The most comments I received pertained to “It’s the people and their decisions that will make a project hell” It’s beneficial if you go back and read the article before going on. How DO we take a politically saturated, finger...