This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
To build an outside-in model, and use new forms of analytics, we must start the discussion with the question of, “what drives value?” ” Traditional planning models optimize functional processes to improve cost and customer service. You are right. The answer is not th e Gartner Top 25. What should we do?
In follow-up qualitative interviews, one of the largest issues with organizational alignment was metric definition and a clear definition of supply chain excellence. In my post Mea Culpa, I reference my work with the Gartner Supply Chain Hierarchy of Metrics. Error is error, but is it the most important metric? My answer is no.
These steps include sourcing and receiving inventory, storing inventory, order processing, picking and packing an order, shipping the order, and returns management. Standard sizes and categorizations play a crucial role in determining the costs associated with shipping products that meet standard criteria in fulfillment centers.
The transition to renewable energy and the adoption of sustainable practices are now essential for reducing environmental impact, ensuring regulatory compliance, and maintaining competitiveness. Businesses face heightened uncertainty in managing costs and securing stable energy supplies.
If you’re evaluating procurement technology or exploring ways to drive more value from existing systems, chances are you’re looking beyond tactical fixes – you want a smarter, scalable strategy. Misaligned priorities across finance, legal, and procurement create friction that delays decision-making and reduces impact.
Traditionally, procurement has been a process weighed down by manual tasks, fragmented systems, and endless paperwork. Today, procurement is undergoing a transformation. While procurement teams have long worked to add strategic value, Artificial Intelligence (AI) amplifies their impact.
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.
For most CPOs and CFOs, deciding on the right purchasing setup — centralized or decentralized — is no small task. Each model has its perks, and choosing the best fit can feel like walking a tightrope. Keep reading to learn: What is centralized purchasing? What is centralized purchasing?
Reason #6 Not effectively managing inventory. Reason #9 Relentless pursuit of one supply chain metric at the expense of other metrics. Imagine that your child brings home their report card and it’s a mix of good and fair grades. One example that I’ve seen several times is around inventory targets.
Enterprise procurement leaders are under more pressure than ever—juggling cost control, compliance, supplier risk, and internal complexity, all while trying to modernize outdated systems. AI, automation, and generative tools are redefining efficiency, allowing procurement teams to move from reactive to proactive decision-making.
Most of the business networks were hollowed out by venture capitalists or purchased by opportunists. ” My problem is that we move through these hype cycles with little accountability for spending and with a major opportunity cost to not redefine work. Or that a focus on costreduction can actually undermine value creation?)
Supply chain efficiency is the cornerstone of success and involves the effective management of processes, resources, and technologies from procurement to production, transportation to warehousing. In the automotive sector, manufacturers are simultaneously reducinginventorycosts and delivery times.
This year’s conference brought together industry leaders, tech pioneers, and retail professionals to address challenges and opportunities, to explore technologies and strategies that promise to revolutionize the industry. Here are the key insights we gathered firsthand at this year’s event.
It is crucial for organizations to understand the importance of Purchase Order collaboration to effectively manage their direct spend, optimize operations, and mitigate risks. From natural disasters to geopolitical tensions and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains have been significantly impacted.
According to McKinsey , organizations implementing AI-driven demand forecasting solutions can reduce forecast errors by 30% to 50%. Even more impressive, lost sales due to stockouts can decrease by up to 65%, while inventoryreductions of 20% to 50% are possible. The company recognizes over 200 micro-climates within the U.S.
A disruption at any point in the global logistics network including the average of 12 touch points from shipment packaging to final delivery can prove disastrous for profits, service levels, customer loyalty, and other key metrics. With the global e-commerce market predicted to reach $8.1 billion to $23.07
How aligned do you believe your organization is to drive these metrics? P&G did not appreciate the work Gilette accomplished on form and function of inventory and using market signals. As a result, the company’s performance at the intersection of margin and inventory turns was circular for the past decade.
Picture this: You’re a warehouse manager, and with a few taps on your smartphone, you instantly know the exact location and quantity of every item in your inventory. That’s not science fiction—it’s the power of mobile inventory management. Ready to turn your inventory from a headache into a strategic asset?
Supply shortages resulting in empty shelves or parking lots of WIP inventory represent a spectre causing supply chain leaders to reconsider supply chain inventory practices. Opinion of just-in-time (JIT) as a practice has taken a battering and inventory is rising. Is supply chain inventory the problem?
This unlocks enormous value as you eliminate time lags, lower costs, and slash inventory buffers across the network. This strategy enables companies to achieve four critical objectives: Unlock value trapped in the supply network that is due to poor data quality and communication. This then sub-optimises the supply chain.
Shippers need to reevaluate their existing last mile logistics processes and devise an effective last mile logistics strategy that aligns consumer and business expectation. In fact, an effective last mile logistics strategy must consider these nine key points. Planning Is Essential To Have an Effective Last Mile Logistics Strategy.
At each company, there is a relationship between the metrics of growth, margin, inventory, customer service, and asset strategy. For the purpose of this article, I will use Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) as the proxy metric to discuss asset utilization.) Understanding this relationship requires modeling. (A
According to McKinsey & Company, procurement accounts for 50% to 80% of a company’s cost base. That’s why organizations zero in on strategies to achieve procurementcostreduction. It cutscosts yet helps maintain product quality and smooth operations.
By maximizing space utilization, improving inventory control , and boosting workflow efficiency, you can unlock significant cost savings and elevate your customer service game. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the key elements of warehouse optimization and provide actionable strategies you can implement today.
Wikipedia In 2014, I was exploring methods to publish what is now the Supply Chains To Admire report. The use of orbit charts allowed me to see the patterns of performance at the intersection of metrics over time. We purchase data from Y charts. (A We have archived corporate reporting from Y charts for 1982-2023.
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. The orbit chart below illustrates L’Oréal’s performance at the intersection of two metrics.
As an old gal, with over forty-years of supply chain experience, writing this report for ten years taught me many lessons. I find in the orbit chart analysis that 45% of companies in the report are unconsciously incompetent. An average margin of 21% with inventory turns of 1.58 I admit it. Lora was as well.
There are many ways an organization can cut supply chain costs. While there are no short-term fixes, enterprises should prioritize areas where they can make the quickest gains to reducecosts. Mastering Direct Spend Management Procurement teams generally do not report to the chief supply chain officer.
GEP and the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Supply Chain Resource Cooperative surveyed supply chain, procurement and IT professionals across a range of industries to gain insight into their priorities and strategies regarding supply chain resilience and optimization. Alex Zhong, Director Product Marketing at GEP.
I see a preponderance of reports and white papers that have lots of pages but say little. Each concept is flawed adding to, not reducing, cost and waste. Optimization engines to improve functional metric performance resulted in an exploding number of planners. Rolling up a perpetual inventory signal takes eleven hours.
Analytics and business intelligence (BI) are no longer optionaltheyre essential. They integrate, align, and activate data across the business to drive better, faster decisions unlike legacy reporting tools that can’t. Flexible Delivery Options Interactive dashboards, scheduled reports, alerts, mobile access, and more.
What is Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) and Why It’s Essential for Your ERP and Inventory Software? Strong vendor relationships are critical for business success, especially when it comes to managing inventory and procurement. By automating this process, you reduce errors and improve financial reporting accuracy.
When I hear companies discussing the implementation of a customer segmentation strategy, I ask a series of questions: Who is your customer? What are you trying to accomplish through the execution of a customer segmentation strategy? In my opinion, we have made procurement increasingly complex without adding value.
Inventory is the lifeblood of any manufacturing business. Get it right, and youve got happy customers and streamlined costs. Striking the perfect balance between available stock and cost efficiency is key. Tracking inventory flow and performance across your supply chain is a must. But what exactly should you measure?
This shift has pushed supply chain leadership to pivot from reactive management to proactive strategy built on data. Analytics allows organizations to move beyond intuition. With real-time dashboards, predictivemodels, and risk simulations, leaders can identify bottlenecks before they occur.
In 2014, ecommerce strategies grew in importance. At that time, manufacturers talked about customer-centric supply chains, but were afraid to aggressively adopt ecommerce strategies. Manufacturers, today, are aggressively pursuing e-commerce strategies. Get Good at Having a Real-time Perpetual Inventory Signal.
So, distribution center managers who leverage strategic slotting optimization technology could cut picking costs by up to 50 percent. Strategic Slotting Optimization Technology and Practices Reduce Carrying Costs. The revenue of a given distribution center is directly related to its carrying costs.
The consulting team pitches a theme–vision of supply chain best practices, big data analytics, or demand-driven value networks– to the executive team, and a new project is initiated. It was also the preference of the consulting partners because the projects were longer, more costly and better aligned with the consulting model.
Keeping up with customer demands, managing inventory, and making sure everything runs smoothly — it’s a lot to handle. We’ll cover everything step by step, from the basics to advanced strategies. Must-have features, like real-time inventory tracking and barcode scanning. There’s a better way.
Understanding how your Procurement and Supply Chain KPIs are performing isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for survival and growth. Is inventory bloating your costs? Why You Need Visibility of Supply Chain and Procurement KPIs? Struggling with the true cost of ownership or serving your customers?
There is so much data, and to make use of it, we need to use data mining and analytics to drive meaningful insights that can be put to some good use. ABC Analysis for Inventory Planning : Clustering products that behave similarly highlights issues, challenges, and opportunities for serving customers better.
Businesses often use it in retail and purchasing. Category management isn’t just another procurement trend. It’s a way for companies to group similar goods or services (like IT infrastructure, facilities, or raw materials) and manage them holistically instead of handling every purchase in isolation.
The past few years have created a lasting impact on the way business is conducted, driving many companies to analytics to gain the visibility they need to control and optimize key processes. The Basics of Procurement KPIs. To accomplish this, our clients rely on the built-in data hub of our Stratum reporting application.
Containerization eventually reduced shipping and loading costs by at least 75%. The trade with Asia we take for granted today was only possible by mitigating a significant supply chain trade-off – reducingcosts without appreciable impacts to quality and service. The myth of the “perfect plan”.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 102,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content