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Your inbox quickly fills with concerned emails highlighting rising costs, delayed materials, and your teams urgent efforts to assess the situation and determine the next steps. manufacturer I know saw their import costs jump overnight, forcing a rethink of a decade-old sourcing strategy.
Strategies that worked just a few years ago are now too rigid, manual, or disconnected to keep up. But what does it actually take to regain control and build a procurement strategy that’s both resilient and scalable? How do you begin developing a procurement strategy?
Strategies that worked just a few years ago are now too rigid, manual, or disconnected to keep up. But what does it actually take to regain control and build a procurement strategy that’s both resilient and scalable? How do you begin developing a procurement strategy?
The logistics and supply chain industry is a critical component of global trade, responsible for moving goods and materials efficiently to meet consumer and business demands. Reducing dependency on fossil fuels can mitigate these risks and improve operational predictability.
For global manufacturers, managing direct and indirect material spend can get very complicated very quickly. Multiple legacy systems prevent procurement from standardizing processes and tracking what they’re spending with each supplier.
For instance, Summit Materials uses the Samsara Connected Operations Cloud across its 4,000-vehicle fleet, centralizing data on fuel usage, emissions, and diagnostics to improve fuel efficiency and advance sustainability goals. This approach to route optimization minimizes delays and helps maintain exacting standards of service reliability.
Lets explore these challenges and strategies to overcome them. Conflicts in critical regions disrupt access to essential materials. Optimize Inventory and Pricing Use AI-driven insights for stock mix optimization and dynamic pricing, reducing excess stock while meeting service level goals.
For senior leaders, understanding and integrating the three pillars of sustainability—environmental, social, and economic—into supply chain strategies is essential. Reducing carbon emissions is a cornerstone of this effort. Meanwhile, advances in AI-driven route optimization reduce unnecessary mileage, cutting emissions and costs.
By placing photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roofs of buildings, warehouses can capture sunlight and convert it into electricity, reducing energy costs and carbon emissions. The integration of robotics within warehouse operations has led to significant improvements in productivity, accuracy, and cost savings. According to JLL, the U.S.
The result was a year-over-year savings of more than 3%. This case study — How a Global CPG Leader Optimized $500M of Direct Materials Spend and Exceeded Savings Goal by Partnering with GEP — details how GEP’s strategic insights helped the company increase its resilience and optimize direct materials spend to drive year-over-year savings.
Trade policies are constantly evolving, forcing companies to assess how these changes impact customer demand, supply networks, fulfillment strategies, and cost to serve. As a result, the company had to lay off workers and reevaluate its entire strategy – even as tariffs are paused – due to a lack of supply chain flexibility.
Treating suppliers as essential partners in the field of direct spend management—almost like customers—can be a key component of a successful company strategy. Supply Chain Knowledge and Risk Mitigation: Suppliers have a direct impact on direct spend with raw material and transportation costs as two big drivers of operating margins.
Despite these reductions, the industry faces complex economic, regulatory, and technological challenges that impact its scalability. Broadening access to smaller organizations will require continued reductions in cost and improvements in efficiency.
They integrate AI into demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and logistics operations to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and mitigate risks. Companies must react after the fact, often incurring higher costs and reduced service levels. AI-driven logistics optimization has resulted in faster and more cost-effective deliveries.
From new pricing strategies and material substitutability to alternative suppliers and stockpiling, a new GEP-commissioned Economist Impact report reveals that enterprises are adopting a variety of approaches underpinned by data and technology.
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.
Balancing Cost-Efficiency with Ethical Sourcing and Compliance Cost-efficiency remains a primary driver for supply chain strategies, but it must be balanced with ethical sourcing practices. Environmental Impact: Reducing emissions, conserving resources, and adhering to environmental regulations.
The problem is that the reduction of costs within one function does not necessarily drive value. I think the rewiring starts with the education of the executive team, and that process should follow strategy. Instead, implement a balanced scorecard, build a clear strategy, and align bonus incentives. What should we do?
Addressing the Challenge: Practical Approaches Organizations making progress on ESG-driven supply chains are employing several practical strategies. Third-party audits, certifications, and blockchain-based supply chain tracking are being used to strengthen data verification efforts and reduce reliance on self-reported information.
Get an inside look at a multi-year 4PL collaboration journey, culminating in the implementation of 4flow TORO to unlock the full potential of early optimization in material and transportation planning.
Fortunately, the expected storm surge never materialized, and landfall narrowly missed the densely populated Tampa Bay area. UVa Health said it is working on reducing any unnecessary waste of IV products, including IV fluids, dialysis fluids, parenteral nutrition, and irrigation fluids.
A customer case story presented showed significant speed improvements in identifying process issues and reductions in employee time spent on this task, potentially leading to substantial annual savings through improved early payment discounts. Automate: utilizes technologies such as RPA, IDP, and IPaaS.
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. SCP involves meticulously planning the journey of a material or product from its raw material stage to its final consumer.
Reduces Implementation Times Enterprises and supply chain software providers strive to reduce application implementation times. With a data gateway you can automate data operations, reducing the need for manual intervention and improving overall efficiency.
Even global manufacturers –– companies across industrial, automotive, chemical, and energy industries –– are scrambling to mitigate the impacts of labor, material and energy shortages, delays, inflation, and unexpected events. It’s not just small and medium-size businesses that are caught off guard.
Create Short-Term and Long-Term Shipping Strategies Tip: To successfully navigate import tariff challenges, it's essential to have both short-term and long-term shipping strategies in place. They will analyze your current shipping processes and develop strategies to optimize your logistics operations.
Both focus on improving efficiency and reducing costs but differ in their strategic approach and impact on the core business operations. Together, these procurement strategies are essential for robust, efficient business operations.
production at its South Carolina plant to reduce reliance on North American imports. Mitigation Strategies in the Auto Sector To cope with rising tariffs, automakers are accelerating plans for nearshoring and domestic production expansion. government is expanding farm subsidies to offset revenue losses from reduced trade.
As supply chains adapt to rising complexity, automation has moved from an optional investment to a core operational strategy. While both AGVs and AMRs transport materials within a facility, they differ in navigation, adaptability, and system architecture. AGVs vs. AMRs: What’s the Difference?
In alignment with its end-to-end supply chain strategy, Blue Yonder will now be able to assist its customers in automating the collection and exchange of shipment data from logistics suppliers, facilitating accredited and traceable emissions calculations across all transportation modes, including air, inland (truck, rail, barge), and sea.
Read on to explore key AI use cases in procurement, the challenges businesses face, strategies to overcome them, and the exciting opportunities AI brings for the future. This gives them advance warning so they can adjust their purchasing strategies. Here are the topics we’ll cover at a glance : What is AI in procurement?
They never leveraged their point-of-sale data to detect market shifts, and the supply chain organization prioritized cost reduction. On our second priority, we delivered another strong year of industry-leading productivity, with holistic margin management cost savings of 5% of the cost of goods sold. ” My thought: ouch!
Supply Chain Resilience: Strategic partnerships with reliable suppliers guarantee consistent material availability, regardless of production scale. Dependencies on suppliers who cant meet increased demand can lead to material shortages and production delays. This reliability prevents bottlenecks and keeps production flowing smoothly.
Infor’s CEO, Kevin Samuelson Infor’s strategy for differentiating their business from competitors like SAP and Oracle rests on a truly differentiated approach to ensuring that their customers get ongoing value from the business applications they purchase. Infor, with anticipated revenues of $3.4 We just want them solved.”
An ERP strategy to optimize the potential of the innovations on offer is critical for manufacturers across the globe. The following five evolving tech trends will inform manufacturers ERP strategies in 2025. IoT sensors also enable predictive maintenance, thereby extending the lifetime of machines and reducing downtime.
With increasing environmental awareness, companies are adopting innovative strategies to make warehousing more sustainable without sacrificing productivity. Transitioning to sustainable practices reduces environmental impact and cuts costs in the long term. This reduces dependency on fossil fuels and lowers electricity costs over time.
DDMRP : Demand-driven Materials Replenishment Planning is useful for calculating the right buffer for direct materials and improves traditional MRP logic. The problem is that it is order-driven and the order is not a good proxy for demand in make-to-stock and configure-to-order processes.
By producing only whats needed, when its needed, they eliminate the burden of forecasting errors and reduce warehouse dependency. Powered by digital tools, on-demand strategies offer a cleaner, more responsive path to production. Raw materials, energy, and labor go into making goods that never get used.
The formula for OTIF is: Measuring a supply chain against OTIF metrics is a key strategy that helps decision makers attach a tangible value to the success of their fulfillment and allows them to determine key strategies. Without re-stocks, optimizing fulfillment from the right location is more important than ever.
An emerging trend is also the integration of edge computing with robotics, enabling real-time decision-making and reducing latency in automated systems. This technological convergence allows robots to process data locally, enhancing responsiveness and reducing dependency on centralized computing infrastructure.
From raw material sourcing to logistics and regulatory compliance, stakeholders across the value chain will need to prepare for structural adjustments. Each reformulation may involve regulatory submissions, quality assurance reviews, and potential consumer communication strategies.
With companies importing raw materials, components, and finished products, rising tariff rates and customs duties can erode profit margins and disrupt business strategies, especially given the reliance of U.S. By Jackson Wood , Director of Industry Strategy, Global Trade Intelligence at Descartes.
Warehouse Robotics: Systematic Redesign of Core Functions Warehouse operations have historically relied on manual labor for tasks such as picking, sorting, inventory management, and material handling. Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) follow predefined routes and are well-suited for repetitive, fixed-path material transport.
Reduces Implementation Times Enterprises and supply chain software providers strive to reduce application implementation times. With a data gateway you can automate data operations, reducing the need for manual intervention and improving overall efficiency.
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