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If you’re managing inventory with spreadsheets , you’re not alone—but you might be falling behind. While Excel has long been a go-to for planners, the landscape has changed. In this dynamic environment, inventory management powered by spreadsheets is no longer a viable strategy. But familiarity doesn’t equal effectiveness.
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.
You’re juggling production schedules, managing inventory, keeping an eye on finances, and making sure everything runs smoothly on the shop floor. Think of it as the central nervous system of your operation, connecting everything from production planning and inventory control to supply chain management and financial reporting.
Observations on What It Takes In the Mea Culpa post, I wrote that I used to believe that excellence in S&OP was a ratio of 60/30/10. (60% P&G did not appreciate the work Gilette accomplished on form and function of inventory and using market signals. Profits were good, and the organization struggled to manage inventory.
Clear operating strategy and definition of supply chain excellence across plan, source, make and deliver. Most companies buy decision support technology, but do not redefine work to improve decisions. I like the use of growth, margin, inventory turns, Return on Invested Capital, customer service and ESG metrics. Drives Value.
Esther is the Chief Revenue Officer at Flowspace , an ecommerce fulfillment platform that helps brands meet their customers’ post-purchase expectations. Flowspace is an ecommerce fulfillment platform that helps brands meet their customers’ post-purchase expectations. About Esther Kestenbaum Prozan.
Inventory is the lifeblood of any manufacturing business. By leveraging analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs), manufacturers can optimize inventory, reduce waste, and boost profitability. Tracking inventory flow and performance across your supply chain is a must. Thats where data-driven decision-making comes in!
In May 2025, one in seven home-purchase agreements fell through resulting in the cancellation of 56,000 purchase contracts. Information flows through commercial teams from the channel back into the organization it meets supply-centric ship-from models. A negative FVA increases cost, inventory, and risk. We can do better.
My Monday morning staff meetings could have been a Saturday night live skit. Frank, the line manager for manufacturing, dominated the meetings. Ed argued that instead of buying new packaging equipment that we should work with R&D to have a base flavor and add the color and flavoring at the head of the machine.
The meeting is on everyone’s calendar. There is an abundance of pastries flowing from the basket, and the stage is set for an impactful meeting. Even though things seem to be going well (all of the meeting details are well-executed and the speaker is giving an energized presentation), the room is eerily quiet.
Supplier problems will cause a cascade of problems up and down the value stream, leading to supply order delays that cause inventory shortages, production disruptions, missed shipments and lost revenue. Organizations need to consider several factors for collaboration to be effective.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) does not meet this definition. With slim margins and ever-increasing inventories, companies invested less in capital assets. Today, this network operates with less capacity and ballooning inventories. Here I offer three starting points: ESG Initiatives Need to Focus on Inventory.
Peeling Back the Lid on Supply Chain World Salad In this world, where board discussions focus on eliminating waste and meeting corporate social responsibility goals, supply chain teams respond with projects like end-to-end planning, control towers, and real-time decisions. Rolling up a perpetual inventory signal takes eleven hours.
Excess and obsolete inventory. When you don’t make what you sell and don’t sell what you make you create inventory. A well-executed sales and operations planning process can transform a company; allowing them to better control inventory and costs while meeting rapidly changing demand pictures. Sound familiar? Lots of it.
Millions of shoppers, like my Dad, are not going back to their old habits because there are now faster and more convenient ways for buying daily household needs. It excels on a union of E-Commerce mobile apps and last-mile delivery innovations. Inventory Optimization. Supply Chain Digitalization & Autonomous Planning.
It is often necessary to pivot or flex the production schedule in real-time to meet changing customer delivery timeframes or substitute one sourced material for another. For example, Capable to Promise can determine the availability of required raw materials, purchased parts, manufacturing time, and more needed to complete the required order.
This blog explores procurement vs supply chain strategy and looks at how aligning the two leads to operational excellence. It includes procurement but also spans logistics, production, inventory management, and distribution. Theyre still too often stuck in their own lanes. It doesnt have to be that way.
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. The discussion of customer-segmented supply chains happens often. Why does it matter to you? It is systemic.
Is inventory bloating your costs? A scorecard acts as your dashboard, providing crucial visibility that helps you: Make Data-Driven Decisions: Replace guesswork with facts when evaluating suppliers, processes, and inventory levels. Improve Efficiency: Understand process timelines and inventory holding to streamline operations.
We conclude this two part series about manufacturing operations excellence by consultant Chuck Intrieri, by outlaying why manufacturers should focus on a critical component that will help sustain manufacturing operations excellence for years to come. What is Driving Sustainable Manufacturing Operations Excellence? Work centers?
Inventory is typically one of a manufacturer’s top three investments, making it a central factor in the business’ success. Too much inventory wastes capital; too little inventory delays production. Let’s look at common inventory management challenges and how they can be addressed using a manufacturing ERP system.
Excess inventory – it’s taking up your warehouse space, tying up working capital, and limiting your planning team’s range of motion. It’s time to Marie Kondo your supply chain by eliminating excess inventory and learning how to avoid it in the first place. Let’s talk about: What Excess Inventory Is. What Causes Excess Inventory.
It was a story where people believed that functional excellence leads to supply chain superiority. I strongly feel that a blind focus on functional excellence will cause the supply chain to become out of balance. Multi-tier inventory optimization was a fad in the last decade. One that is going to eat you up!
With the purchase of i2 by JDA, and Logictools by IBM, manufacturing companies serious about network design started looking for a company, with a well-established community, that was more serious about network design. It could no longer be just about inventory levels. Cost-to-Serve and Top-to-Top Meetings. The gap is tough.
In the automotive sector, manufacturers are simultaneously reducing inventory costs and delivery times. Effectiveness emphasizes meeting strategic objectives and customer expectations. An efficient procurement process optimizes vendor selection and purchasing decisions to maintain cost-effective inventory levels.
Pirelli needed to move from using an army of representatives visiting dealer sites, showing them massive catalogs, and saying to the dealer, “You could buy this or this or this.” Pirelli’s digital transformation challenge was to use a new digital platform that could scale to meet its complex integrated business planning process.
similarly, over 95% of manufacturers invested and implemented supply chain planning, but their primary tool today is Excel. Meet my terrier crew. How does the plan tie to the balanced scorecard of growth, inventory health, operating margin, customer service, and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)? ” Does the Dog Hunt?
For the past five years, the team at Supply Chain Insights identified Supply Chains to Admire Award Winners by analyzing performance by peer group on the key metrics of growth, operating margin, inventory turns and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC). Meet Ernest. In 2018, Rockwell Automation won the Supply Chains to Admire Award.
High e-commerce shopping rates combined with construction delays are causing a strain in the supply of new warehouse space, especially as companies shift their inventory management strategies from just- in-time (JIT) inventory management to larger safety stocks for better responsiveness.
Bonuses and incentives align with functions and are often counter productive to driving supply chain excellence. Today, over 90% of companies have deployed ERP and APS, but as shown in Table 1, inventory levels have grown not decreased in over 80% of industries studied. Days of Inventory by Industry Across Years.
At the end of a long day of a strategy session on supply chain excellence with a client, I needed to fill up some time in an agenda. Through a series of meetings to drive consensus, the team degraded the quality of the demand plan by 27%. (In The strategy day owner was a global process center of excellence leader. The result?
Start Your Year with Cloud-Based ERP: The Ultimate Guide to Operational Excellence Begin your year on a transformative note by embracing the power of Cloud-Based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Operational Excellence with Cloud-Based ERP Procurement Management Efficiently manage your procurement processes with ERP.
Let me give you an example: Last week, I gave a presentation at a global supply chain team meeting of 175 professionals. They had seen my videos on the website and needed a speaker for their global kick-off meeting. This team is not buying the message. It was a large multinational company. “I study supply chains.
While we might go and get the best of the solutions out there to meet today’s challenges and leverage today’s technology, that’s not going to come with a lifetime guarantee that it will meet all our needs in the years ahead. They can adjust quantities and generate supplier replenishment orders in PDF or Excel as needed.
By maximizing space utilization, improving inventory control , and boosting workflow efficiency, you can unlock significant cost savings and elevate your customer service game. Essential technology solutions, including Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), Inventory Management Systems (IMS), and the transformative power of IoT and automation.
Inventory management is a crucial aspect of supply chain management, and effective strategies can help businesses reduce costs, improve customer service, and increase profits. But what does a great inventory management strategy look like? But consider, too, how you can turn those needs to your advantage in inventory management.
Organizations then convert those demand forecasts to the associated quantities of raw materials to purchase, goods to be manufactured, or finished products to ship. As demand forecasting accuracy increases, and the standard deviation associated with the forecast decreases, the need to hold “just in case” inventory also goes down.
Love it or hate it, daily necessities need to be purchased. Whichever reasons fuel the motivations of your target market, here are the top trends shaping how they’ll buy – and how you can stay front of mind and ahead of the competition. eCommerce Purchases and “The New Normal” Retail Categories. Data source: eMarketer.
When I meet with my customers, I get thumbs-down feedback. Which metrics do you think matter to supply chain excellence? The ultimate metric of success used by Starbucks was the percent of coffee purchased from CAFE Practices verified farmers. . “When I ask my team about customer service, I get high-five reviews.
Inaccurate forecasts lead to either excess inventory or stockouts, causing increased costs, an abundance of stock that cannot be sold, lost sales and customer dissatisfaction. Efficient inventory turnover is crucial in the fast-paced high-tech industry. End-to-end supply chain visibility. Sustainability and circular supply chains.
Effective retail supply chain management also helps to manage inventory levels, reduce waste and ultimately customer satisfaction. That’s why retailers place so much focus on buying well. Effective warehouse management affects various elements such as inventory control, order fulfillment, and overall operational efficiency.
Amazon announces new changes to inventory limits. It includes free shipping of online purchases, free grocery deliveries to the home for orders of at least $35, prescription discounts and other benefits. Existing inventory that fits the qualification for the extra-large storage type will automatically be reclassified as extra-large.
Companies tightly coupling the budget to S&OP have significantly higher inventories and lower growth than their peer group. Demand latency is two-eight weeks delayed from consumption purchase to translate to an order. Industries carried on average 32 days more inventory in 2020 than in 2007. (I Mistake #3. My challenge?
Most companies have made their own organizations more efficient (ROA), but they have not reduced inventories and they have pushed costs back in the supply chain on suppliers that are less able to bear them. We have let buy- and sell-side transactional relationships erode value. I order 75% of my purchases online.
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