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In a survey we conducted in October 2020, 91% of our Indago supply chain research community members, who are all supply chain executives from manufacturing, retail, and distribution companies, either Agreed or Strongly Agreed that the time had come to transform the traditional transportation procurement process.
The manufacturing sector is facing unprecedented volatility in global trade, with tariffs becoming the latest in a series of uncertainty drivers that are impacting virtually all industries. Manufacturing plants are deeply entrenched; tied to infrastructure, suppliers, skilled labor, and regulatory requirements.
A data gateway is essentially a connective tissue across your supply chain, providing unified access to supply chain data from various sources, including enterprise systems, data feeds, data warehouses, data lakes, data marts, and business entities.
Home Introducing Freightos Enterprise: End-to-End Procurement, Benchmarking, and Management Freightos Enterprise unifies market intelligence, tender management, and shipment operations into one solution, enhancing logistics efficiency for large import-export businesses.
Procurement became a logical place for leading healthcare systems to focus. As vice president of supply chain and procurement, Mr. Wengert was brought in to drive change. Hospital chains’ approach to procurement lagged far behind the practices employed by manufacturers, retailers, and distributors. “We How did St.
Factors like automation, massive investments in at-scale, fit-for-purpose technologies, specialized training, low labor rates, and effective demand and supply planning capabilities, have woven themselves like threads into the fabric of efficient global manufacturing ecosystems. Batteries are sourced from South Korea and China.
A data gateway is essentially a connective tissue across your supply chain, providing unified access to supply chain data from various sources, including enterprise systems, data feeds, data warehouses, data lakes, data marts, and business entities.
This enables companies to adjust sourcing, production, and logistics well in advance of potential disruptions. Load balancing algorithms ensure efficient distribution across Amazons logistics network, preventing bottlenecks and improving delivery reliability. This reduces excess inventory while maintaining service levels.
For example, if I improve the cost structure in transportation, procurement, manufacturing and sales independently, what decision support framework decides the right trade-offs? In current systems where Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP) and Transportation Management (TMS) are different models, alignment is impossible.
From raw material sourcing to logistics and regulatory compliance, stakeholders across the value chain will need to prepare for structural adjustments. Sourcing and Ingredient Availability A central impact of this policy is the need to replace synthetic colorants with natural alternatives.
On the positive side, companies such as a small manufacturer of advanced plastic components used across various sectors, such as medical, industrial, automotive and consumer products has experienced increased interest from clients eager to purchase American-made goods. Where do industrial companies focus to prepare for tariffs?
In May 2025, one in seven home-purchase agreements fell through resulting in the cancellation of 56,000 purchase contracts. Supply chain was defined in 1982 as interoperability between source, make and deliver. Ask a procurement or transportation professional if they have a good demand signal and expect a laugh.
Scaling manufacturing operations is crucial for business growth but presents unique challenges. Balancing increased demand with consistent quality and controlled costs is difficult but essential for manufacturers looking to expand. Successfully scaling manufacturing requires more than just adding resources.
Reducing cost was the primary objective, and most operational decisionsfrom sourcing to fulfillmentreflected that mindset. Sudden tariff increases can quickly make a cost-optimized procurement strategy untenable, leaving companies scrambling to adjust. Procurement is another area seeing change.
Planners are uniquely positioned with an end-to-end focus, from procurement of materials, through manufacturing and engineering, to the movement, storage, and delivery of finished products or services. Supply chain planners are now frequently tasked with initiating transformations to address these various pressures.
If you would like to participate in a current research study, we would love your help and participation in the contract manufacturing study. We are trying to assess the value of a network in managing contract manufacturing.) One of the alignment gaps that is growing and is unfortunate is the gap between procurement and manufacturing.
Bowman, SupplyChainBrain In the rush to adjust sourcing strategies in line with current trends in international trade, the answer might be to think small. manufacturers have spent the last few decades consolidating production at gigantic offshore plants, especially in China. Enter the concept of the “microfactory.”
That’s the power of manufacturing data collection. Manufacturing data collection is your secret weapon for boosting efficiency, cutting waste, and staying ahead of the competition. Manufacturing data collection is your secret weapon for boosting efficiency, cutting waste, and staying ahead of the competition.
Home Introducing Freightos Enterprise: End-to-End Procurement, Benchmarking, and Management Freightos Enterprise unifies market intelligence, tender management, and shipment operations into one solution, enhancing logistics efficiency for large import-export businesses.
This is amplified across the supply chain into an exponential impact on inventory and planned orders for manufacturing. When we measure the bullwhip impact (in my class on outside-in process thinking), the bullwhip between manufacturing and procurement is 2-3X. Muda comes from many sources. The difference is opportunity.
Procurement and supply chain management are often used interchangeably—but in practice, the lines between them can blur in ways that create real friction. Misaligned priorities, siloed systems, and unclear ownership can directly impact key performance indicators like cost savings percentage and procurement cycle time.
The high-tech firm is more than a manufacturer of PCs, tablets, smartphones, and servers. The company has more than 2000 suppliers and operates over 30 manufacturing sites. We have all our factories, both in-house and outsourced, all of our distribution centers, and our transportation network on the Blue Yonder foundational system.
Just-in-time (JIT) inventory models, lean supplier networks, and offshore manufacturing reduced expenses but left companies exposed to disruptions. The COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical shifts demonstrated the risks of relying on single-source suppliers and minimal inventory buffers. Resilience is now taking precedence.
Supply chains, which facilitate the movement of products from manufacturers to consumers, have historically encountered issues such as inefficiency, fraud, and a lack of transparency. Companies find it difficult to fully trust the data from suppliers, complicating efforts to ensure product authenticity, safety, and ethical sourcing.
Probabilistic forecasting is revolutionizing demand forecasting, supply planning, and inventory optimization by significantly improving forecast accuracy and decision-making across distribution networks. However, this approach ignores real purchasing behavior, such as customers buying complete sets of four tires. The result?
This approach significantly improves forecast accuracy and enhances decision-making across distribution networks. Advanced supply chain planning software leverages these probability distributions to optimize inventory targets, balancing service levels against carrying costs with mathematical precision. The result?
Supplier Collaboration: Fundamental to Elevating Manufacturing Performance Supplier relationships are at the heart of manufacturing performance. That’s why supplier collaboration—that consistent, trusted, and responsive interaction between supplier and manufacturer—is pivotal to manufacturing success.
They emphasized being an Industry Cloud Complete Company with industry-specific solutions for over 2000 micro verticals across Process Manufacturing, Distribution, Service Industries, and Discrete Manufacturing. Industry-specific content is available for processes like Source to Settle, Procure to Pay, Order to Cash, and more.
Translation of the demand forecast into planned orders to minimize manufacturing constraints. Use of optimization to consume planned orders into manufacturing scheduling and distribution requirements planning (including inventory optimization of safety stock). MRP is translated based on the manufacturing schedule into ERP.)
How should a global manufacturer make a decision? In short, the research tells me that the manufacturing industries are stuck. In contrast, for a global manufacturer, the answer is more complex. What is the role of make, source, and deliver? And how can supply chain planning help? What defines a feasible plan?
This past February we asked members of our Indago supply chain research community — who are all supply chain and logistics executives from manufacturing, retail, and distribution companies — “Is your company using Artificial Intelligence in its supply chain or logistics operations?”
For 58 years, food and beverage and consumer goods manufacturers have battled for dominance, from chips and wings to soda, beer, party supplies, and even aluminum foil for food storage and DIY trophies. Manufacturers that dont plan ahead will lose the game. That takes a data-driven approach to forecasting, procurement and distribution.
Edge Hardware: The battle for edge hardware also intensified in 2024, as companies sought to deploy AI capabilities closer to the source of data. This puts pressure on other device manufacturers to follow suit. ChatGPT Search : This feature gives users a way to get answers from relevant web sources.
Choosing the Right ERP System for Manufacturing: Key Features to Consider Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a cornerstone of modern manufacturing, bringing together core business functions to improve operational efficiency. Quality Control – Manufacturers must ensure that every product meets industry and customer standards.
The Manufacturing Supply Chain Journey through AI and Automation Manufacturing Supply Chains Explained The manufacturing supply chain comprises all the processes a business uses to turn raw materials and components into final products that are ready to be sold to customers, whether these are consumers or other businesses.
In recent years, manufacturers have experienced substantial supply chain disruptions , leading to material and labor shortages, quality issues, product delays, and low profit margins. Nutanix outsources all its manufacturing to suppliers, CMs, distributors, and technology partners. of potential revenue growth 1.
This sector is driven by several factors, including the ageing vehicle population, the rise of e-commerce platforms , and technological advancements in vehicle manufacturing. Moreover, the proliferation of e-commerce is reshaping how aftermarket products are purchased.
Material handling and forklift equipment manufacturers, including Hyster-Yale, rounded out the comprehensive showcase of integrated solutions shaping the future of supply chain operations. Libiao Robotics demonstrated its T-Sort sorting robots, designed for high-speed parcel distribution in e-commerce fulfillment centers.
Companies that previously prioritized cost-cutting and centralized sourcing quickly found themselves exposed to serious production and distribution risks. In response, many organizations have shifted toward decentralized and regionalized supply chain models, distributing production and sourcing across multiple regions.
Manufacturers have started implementing features of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) to be more flexible and responsive and make more intelligent, data-driven decisions. Manufacturing can not only use IoT for manufacturing, but also to give inventory management greater flexibility and improve decision-making.
We have not designed the planning systems to serve managers, directors, and vice presidents, aiming to improve decision-making and collaboration across the source, make, and deliver processes. Using channel and trading partner signals build outside-in models and orchestrate decisions across source, make and deliver. So, What Is Value?
They write, “This includes tackling bigger issues such as compliance, supplier relationship management, risk and disruption, responsible sourcing, and transparency. “AI allows you to integrate real-time data from various sources, helping you devise more efficient delivery routes and schedules.
That includes analyzing historical data, determining the distribution type for every customer and period, calculating the mean and standard deviation, excluding outliers, and producing a simulated demand picture for as many periods as possible. Every forecast typically begins with internal company historical shipment data.
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