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Each supply chain planning technology at the end of 2024, went through disruption–change in CEO, business model shift, layoffs, re-platforming and acquisitions. To build an outside-in model, and use new forms of analytics, we must start the discussion with the question of, “what drives value?” My advice?
AI in supply chain automation is gradually reshaping how core functions operate, particularly in procurement, warehousing, and logistics. Key Insight: The use of AI in supply chain automation is producing tangible benefits across procurement, warehousing, and logistics.
Venture capitalists are high on Artificial Intelligence (AI), and over-exuberant professors with shiny new models are jockeying into position to get rich. Most of the business networks were hollowed out by venture capitalists or purchased by opportunists. Building a software company is hard work. Ask for use cases.
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.
Three months into 2025, we have seen a barrage of on-again, off-again tariffs that have supply chain and logistics teams reeling, as they must rethink everything from next weeks shipping route to their foundational network models. With the global e-commerce market predicted to reach $8.1 The Ukraine-Russia conflict is ongoing.
Advanced supply chain planning is being transformed by probabilistic forecasting , which revolutionizes demand forecasting, supply planning, and inventoryoptimization. Enhancing Inventory with Probabilistic Forecasting A supply chain is a complex ecosystem influenced by dynamic variables. The result?
Green Logistics: Optimizing transportation routes, consolidating shipments, and employing energy-efficient vehicles to reduce emissions. These initiatives also lead to cost savings by maximizing load capacity and reducing fuel consumption. Advanced route optimization tools further support these goals.
Probabilistic forecasting is revolutionizing demand forecasting, supply planning, and inventoryoptimization by significantly improving forecast accuracy and decision-making across distribution networks. Enhancing Inventory with Probabilistic Forecasting A supply chain is a complex ecosystem influenced by dynamic variables.
Returns Management and Integration With 35% of online purchases being returned, predominantly to physical stores, retailers are grappling with the ripple effects on inventory management. Early adopters of these integrated platforms report significant improvements in inventory turnover and reduction in stockouts.
But between rising costs, complex logistics, and the constant struggle to optimize space and labor, staying ahead can feel like an uphill battle. That’s where warehouse optimization comes in. Here’s what you can expect: A clear definition of warehouse optimization and its core components. Ready to get started?
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?
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.
The trade with Asia we take for granted today was only possible by mitigating a significant supply chain trade-off – reducing costs without appreciable impacts to quality and service. Supply chain optimization has also improved in significant ways that can address these trade-offs better than before.
Reason #4 Making key decisions by modelling the supply chain in Excel. Reason #6 Not effectively managing inventory. Reason #9 Relentless pursuit of one supply chain metric at the expense of other metrics. Reason #9 Relentless pursuit of one supply chain metric at the expense of other metrics. Don’t care.
In a previous post , I made a case for how the Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSCO) and Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) are smarter together. Accordingly Supply Chain and Procurement will need continuous collaboration. By aligning supply chain and procurement, spend can be considered more holistically.
Even more impressive, lost sales due to stockouts can decrease by up to 65%, while inventory reductions of 20% to 50% are possible. This advanced analysis allows businesses to predict promotional lift with unprecedented accuracy, ensuring optimized production schedules and inventory positioning through sophisticated supply planning.
In May 2025, one in seven home-purchase agreements fell through resulting in the cancellation of 56,000 purchase contracts. The concept was that managing trade-offs and optimizing the whole to drive business outcomes would improve value. The ripple effects are pervasive. The reason?
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. As companies across industries have discovered, a well-optimized supply chain can drive significant improvements throughout their operations.
Here’s your two-minute guide to understanding and selecting the right descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics for use across your supply chain. Companies that are attempting to optimize their S&OP efforts need capabilities to analyze historical data, and forecast what might happen in the future.
I know that your primary focus is procurement. If S&OP efforts were that effective, don’t you think that we would have made more progress against inventory levels, margin, and growth? In part, this results in increasing swings in inventory in response to shifts in consumer demand as one moves further up the supply chain.
following the reporting of fourth-quarter results. The Salesforce.com model is primarily a pipeline management tool suitable for discrete markets but not process manufacturers. The models are just too different.) Customers will migrate off of the Logility platform onto newer flow-based outside-in models. Kinaxis and o9.
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.
The basic frame of supply chain planning–functional taxonomies for optimization on a relational database–must be redesigned before supply chain leaders can reap the benefit of deep learning, neural networks, and evolving forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Or a unified data model across source, make, and deliver for planning?
I see a preponderance of reports and white papers that have lots of pages but say little. Optimization engines to improve functional metric performance resulted in an exploding number of planners. Rolling up a perpetual inventory signal takes eleven hours. days to get a perpetual inventory signal and 2.2
By embedding analytics across logistics, sourcing, and fulfillment, businesses gain the visibility and foresight needed to stay competitive.Analytics-driven leadership is no longer a luxury; it’s the foundation of operational survival in todays volatile business environment. Analytics allows organizations to move beyond intuition.
I am currently doing research on inventory management. In the research, I ask inventory planners to define resilience. Of the twenty companies interviewed, only one can answer the question, “Do you have a good inventory plan?” No technology in the market measures inventory health. Today, this is not the case.
In the warehouse context, a digital twin can be created to represent the physical layout, inventory, equipment, and workflows of a warehouse. Simulation allows you to model hypothetical scenarios and physical changes without having to physically change the asset. Physical change (i.e.,
BOSTON, February 16, 2022 : ToolsGroup , a global leader in supply chain planning and optimization software, has partnered with Planalytics to integrate their weather-driven demand (WDD) analytics with ToolsGroup’s retail planning solutions, enabling customers to isolate, measure, and manage the influence of weather on their businesses.
But companies often have diverging incentives and interests from their supply chain partners, so when they independently strive to optimize their individual objectives, the expected result can be compromised. ”. I think about this discussion with Keith often as I work on the Supply Chain Index and edit the chapters of Metrics That Matter.
To keep customers like my dad satisfied, RGD and Quick-commerce companies need to invest in new technologies to optimize the supply chain and logistics operations. InventoryOptimization. InventoryOptimization involves decisions about the inventory level, the location, and the mix of products.
In today’s fast-paced industrial landscape, managing spare parts and MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operations) inventory is more than just keeping shelves stocked. It’s about strategic optimizationensuring availability while minimizing waste and costs. Improve cash flow by reducing capital tied up in inventory.
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.
Last week in the middle of a presentation, a supply chain leader made the statement, “We have solved the issues in supply through better optimization and use of data. The data models are wrong. Most organizations are stuck on their ability to drive improvements in operating margin and inventory cycles. Remember back then?
For businesses with seasonal inventory, estimating yearly demand fluctuations with reasonable accuracy can be both challenging and costly. After all, over-estimating can lead to inventory surplus and associated warehousing costs. This is where predictiveanalytics can prove instrumental for strategic supply chain management.
In this scenario, by adopting an adaptive supply chain, the retailer uses real-time data analytics to identify emerging trends and collaborate closely with suppliers to quickly adjust production and inventory levels to meet customer demand. This collaboration enables faster response times and cost savings.
PwC reports that almost half of assets under management are held by investment firms committed to decarbonization. Similarly, UPS has strong commitments to sustainability and invests in many options, such as alternative fuel vehicles, e-cycles in dense cities, and carbon offsets for purchase with shipping.
Companies are stuck at the intersection of inventory turns and operating margin. In companies, there is no standard model for demand processes. New forms of analytics make new capabilities possible. Let’s start with these: Demand Sensing: The reduction of time to sense purchase and channel takeaway. It is evolving.
Shoppers coping with inflation have shifted buying habits , purchasing fewer goods and cutting back on big name brands in favor of cheaper alternatives. Behind the scenes, CPG brands are strategically balancing cost cutting measures with supply chain investments to ensure preparedness for continuing market shifts.
That’s where manufacturing inventory management software comes in. The right software can streamline your production, optimize stock levels, and even help you save money. We’re talking real-time tracking, automated purchasing, and a whole lot less stress. Spreadsheets just don’t cut it anymore.
Digital commerce efficiently requires the digitalization of many customer-facing operations and sourcing and procurement. The First Step: Bring all the data together and ensure analytics and planning can happen on the same platform. . Accurate and timely reconciliation of purchase orders with receipts.
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.
Retail returns occur when a customer returns the purchased items to a seller in exchange for a refund, store credit, or a similar product. Returns come with plenty of challenges around logistics, inventory, and predicting volatile sales trends. 84% of buyers read the return policy before making an online purchase.
This is because most classical planning solutions lack the modeling capability and computing power to accommodate different data sources, large SKU count, and detailed constraints and contingencies to build an immediately executable plan. each with discrete plans generated typically in sequential batch runs.
Organisations that have successfully implemented RPA initiatives reportcost savings of up to 80% and time savings of up to a staggering 40%. Procurement. Procurement can also have RPA do dynamic searches of websites to source or conduct market research for future buys and tenders. Purchase Order Management.
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