Organizations continue to scour global markets for even lower labor rates, moving from Western China to the Pearl River, and now to Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, and North Africa. Action will be required, and we will have more updates on this topic soon… Articles Director's Blog Emerging Issues in Supply Chain Labor and Human Rights in the Supply Chain SCM Procurement Supply Chain Risk Supply Chain Sustainability Sustainability Uncategorized MORE

Lucky are the companies that can shift production to other countries like Mexico or Vietnam. By using AI and ML, companies can better model and predict demand and fine tune their inventory from procurement to transport to warehouse to routing supplies to locations ahead of demand. A New York Times article from August 2019 highlights how much artificial intelligence (AI) is indebted to humans. MORE

In its current form the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a potential free trade agreement (FTA) between the US and 11 Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries (Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Japan, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, and New Zealand). Further, there are challenges in negotiations around tariff-free market access to components instead of only finished products, remanufactured products, and government procurement. MORE

Almost 75 percent of US companies are experiencing capacity shortfalls in their supply chains, due to Coronavirus-linked transport disruptions , a new study has shown. Examples are: Samsung Electronics , which is shifting part of its domestic phone production to Vietnam due to the rapid advance of COVID-19 in South Korea. It is also airlifting parts from China to its Vietnam operations. MORE

A problem in procurement can impact manufacturing and logistics and planning, but often these dots are never connected, so there never emerges a cross-functional approach to working on them. So as you look across the enterprise, there is a need for a mechanism that pulls exceptions and pulls together in real-time a cross-functional team that can across the end to end supply chain, (including manufacturing sites, 3PL, 4PL, transportation, distribution sites, and suppliers.) MORE

While Vietnam is a popular choice, reports are surfacing that the country’s limited manufacturing capacity is already heavily booked and their ports and other infrastructure are maxed out. What will be the impact on costs for production and transportation? It must consider meaningful news and events as well as understand constraints from partners, infrastructure, procurement, production, distribution, and transportation. What’s the scariest part of a horror movie? MORE

He began by discussing how Free Trade Agreements, along with labor costs and transportation rates, are among the three most critical elements to factor in when analyzing global supply chain decisions. What US industrial leaders must now worry about is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which includes China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and others. MORE

While Vietnam is a popular choice, reports are surfacing that the country’s limited manufacturing capacity is already heavily booked and their ports and other infrastructure are maxed out. What will be the impact on costs for production and transportation? It must consider meaningful news and events as well as understand constraints from partners, infrastructure, procurement, production, distribution, and transportation. What’s the scariest part of a horror movie? MORE

Penske Logistics @PenskeLogistics In early 2018, Penske Logistics gained entry into the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA), which encourages the development of blockchain applications in the transportation industry. In 2017, Smith & Nephew expanded its use of business network and cloud-based applications to support a centralized, efficient procurement process for managing spending from end to end. The world of supply chain and logistics is changing every day. MORE

An excerpt from our book “The Procurement Value Proposition” got a nice section of CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly edition this week. The book looks at what the future procurement capability will need to be, in light of the massive “game changers” of globalization, technology, cultural diversity, demographic issues, and sustainable pressure that is changing the entire ecosystem. MORE

In the last three years we’ve developed our strategy, centralised procurement, purchasing and manufacturing aligned our portfolios across all categories globally and developed our exclusive brands portfolio. We are transitioning our Chinese supplier base to other regions such as Bangladesh and Vietnam for labour cost and quality reasons. Grandvision has grand plans. MORE

Whenever we come across this term ‘Warehouse’, we imagine a big closed place which is used for storage of the goods to be transported, whether inbound or outbound, trucks moving to and fro, lot of labourers would be working etc. Traditionally warehouse was mainly thought as a storage location where items were procured from manufacturer and supplied to retail stores (mainly bulk operation) as end customer buy from stores. MORE