World Class

Apple’s reason to exist is “lead the digital music revolution” and “reinvent the mobile phone” Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”   Those are visions that people breathe every day. Are your company leader’s truly inspiring people? Are they building an inspiring vision, attracting the best talent, building the best teams, creating a exceptional culture and...

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...

I spoke at two major Logistics and Supply Chain Conferences about a major business transformation project I was involved in. It’s time to take a hard look at the successes, challenges and failures. The object of the project was to reach a World Class level for Sales and Operations in the company through the Oliver Wight method. According to Wikipedia S&OP planning was developed by Oliver Wight in the 1980’s. So they know their...

Ever wonder how Apple uses SAP? Apple uses SAP to manage its huge volume of orders in iTunes. I’m also a huge fan of Apple’s supply chain as its one of the best in the world. I bought the book that Tim Cook handed to his work colleagues “Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Markets” It’s about using your supply chain as a strategic weapon in business. Interesting indeed!...

Companies can potentially bleed staggering amounts of money implementing SAP APO (Advanced Planning Optimizer), with a mediocre results that requires extensive re-engineering.  Here are the top five steps required to create a company – wide – lean – mean – APO machine. 1. Get the best of the best to consult and guide you. You will fail or create a nightmare APO design if you do not do your homework and hire the very best...