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L’Oréal: A Case Study in Supply Chain Excellence

Supply Chain Shaman

The award, based on beating the industry peer group on rate of improvement on the key metrics of growth, operating margin, inventory turns, and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) while outperforming their peer group, is tough to achieve. Orbit Chart for L’Oréal at the Intersection of Inventory Turns and Operating Margin.

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Provoking the Industry to Move Past Incrementalism

Supply Chain Shaman

Or agreement on the definition of supply chain excellence. As a result, functional excellence anchors action. The focus is on digitization—automating today’s processes—versus rethinking process excellence based on the art of the possible. In this case, the metrics are operating margin and inventory turns.

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The Coffee Pot Conversation That Will Not Happen

Supply Chain Shaman

Gartner purchased the firm in 2010.) Driving Improvements in Supply Chain Excellence. He felt strongly that supply chain leaders knew how to drive supply chain excellence and needed a forum– or maybe two or three depending on the business model– to help them network and refine their approaches. I disagreed.

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SanDisk’s Story of Customer Segmentation Strategies Using Inventory Postponement

Supply Chain Shaman

How do they buy from you? How do they buy from you?” Instead, in the SanDisk journey , they adjusted the speed of response to their customer segments, and actively designing inventory postponement strategies. Orbit Chart for SanDisk for 2006-2014. The discussion of customer-segmented supply chains happens often.

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Stories of Supply Chain Leadership: An Interview with Joan Motsinger of Seagate

Supply Chain Shaman

Many companies talk about Supply Chain Excellence, but most leaders struggle to define it. One supply chain leader, in a discussion last week, likened supply chain excellence to fitness. He felt that supply chain excellence was analogous. Our journey for supply chain excellence has changed and evolved over time.

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Collaboration? When It Comes to Cash-to-Cash, We Don’t Know How to Walk the Talk

Supply Chain Shaman

Inventory, in this time of uncertainty, is the organization’s most important buffer to protect against variability. However, organizations are not good at managing inventory. Cash-to-cash is a compound metric: (Days of Receivables+Days of Inventory)-Days of Payables=Cash Conversion Cycle. Inventory.

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Epitaph

Supply Chain Shaman

It was called multi-enterprise inventory optimization. In the beginning, the inventory management solutions of LogicTools , Optiant and SmartOps pushed to take operations research to a new level through supply chain optimization. SmartOps was purchased by SAP. They knew little about the software market. It is no more.