Category Archives: Supply Chain

Upcoming Webinars from the #1 Supply Chain Resource Site

The Sourcing Innovation Resource Site, always immediately accessible from the link under the “Free Resources” section of the sidebar, continues to add new content on a weekly, and often daily, basis — and it will continue to do so.

The following is a short selection of upcoming webinars over the next two weeks that you might want to check out:

Date & Time Webcast
2010-Jul-6

 

15:00 GMT/WET

 The Hidden Risks and Benefits when Implementing and Managing a Shared Services Center in LATAM

Sponsor: SSON
2010-Jul-7

 

11:30 GMT-05:00/CDT/EST

 What Makes Best-in-Class Retail Supply Chains?

Sponsor: Supply Chain Digest
2010-Jul-7

 

14:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Using Surety Bonds to Protect your Company

Sponsor: Federation of Credit and Finance Professionals
2010-Jul-7

 

14:15 GMT/WET

 Environmental strategies for cost reduction in pharmaceutical facilities

Sponsor: WTG
2010-Jul-8

 

10:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Align International Payroll Outsourcing with Your Global Strategy

Sponsor: SSON
2010-Jul-8

 

14:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Reliability and Quality Planning: a QLM Framework

Sponsor: PTC
2010-Jul-13

 

2:00 GMT-05:00/CDT/EST

 eSourcing – Automate your Sourcing Process

Sponsor: EC Sourcing Group
2010-Jul-13

 

14:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Tired of Working With Cumbersome Spreadsheets?

Sponsor: Silico
2010-Jul-13

 

13:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Best-in-class Strategies for EHS Compliance and Sustainability

Sponsor: Environmental Leader
2010-Jul-14

 

14:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 External Economic Risk Measurement

Sponsor: FICO
2010-Jul-14

 

14:00 GMT-05:00/CDT/EST

 Trade Promotion Management Takes on Microsoft Excel

Sponsor: MEI
2010-Jul-14

 

11:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 2010 Risk Management 101 Webcast: Basics of Property

Sponsor: Marsh
2010-Jul-15

 

8:00 GMT-07:00/MST/PDT

 Asset Disposition Strategies to Eliminate Excess Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) Inventory

Sponsor: IHS
2010-Jul-15

 

14:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Using EPCIS Data Sharing for Full Supply Chain Visibility

Sponsor: RFID Journal
2010-Jul-15

 

11:30 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

 Industry Trends in Compliance Training 2010

Sponsor: Brandon Hall
2010-Jul-16

 

10:00 GMT-07:00/MST/PDT

 Strategic Account Planning

Sponsor: Relationship Economics

They are all readily searchable from the comprehensive Site-Search page. So don’t forget to review the resource site on a weekly basis. You just might find what you didn’t even know you were looking for!

And continue to keep a sharp eye out for new additions!

Only One More Week. Give Dave Your Support!

On July 6, 2009, Dave Carroll shared his story with the world about how United Airlines carelessly smashed his guitar on March 31, 2008, when he was on the way to a week-long tour of Nebraska, and how United refused to accept any responsibility or fix it. (Full story.) As you may recall, his story, first expressed in a music video on YouTube, was an overnight sensation that quickly received over Three Million views in the first week. It was such a sensation that it even inspired the Harvard Business Review to do a case study on how viral videos spread and what firms can do about them.

 

To date, the trilogy has garnered over 9,942,000 views!

United Breaks Guitars Views (June 29, 2010)
Song 1  8,733,989
Song 2  1,036,185
Song 3  172,070
TOTAL  9,942,244

 

Since the first video was released on July 6, 2009, this means that we’re only one week away from the one year anniversary! It’s time to step up and thank Dave by ensuring that his fantastic efforts receive the Ten Million Hits they deserve before the anniversary is reached … because the airlines, as a whole, still haven’t gotten the message. United Breaks Guitars, Northwest Breaks Dulcimers, and now Delta Smashes Bicycles, proving that they just don’t care whether or not you TriAndGiveaDam or whether or not the children in Africa have water.

Share the links and spread the word! Surely 58,000 views in a week isn’t much of a challenge!

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Want More Supply Chain Profits? Take a Page from David Suzuki’s Notebook.

David Suzuki recently gave the keynote at SAP Canada’s Sustainability in Business Summit. ComputerWorld has been kind enough to put the most relevant part of his keynote on the web on the ITBusiness.ca site. In brief, he says nature has to be the bottom line, and he’s right.

Think about the following facts:

  • Every time you use a gallon of water, that costs you money.
  • Every time you use a watt of energy, that costs you money.And now that carbon tariffs are coming on-line, it costs you even more.
  • It costs money to mine raw materials.Which get more expensive as supply decreases.
  • It costs money to produce and distribute products.Energy costs, carbon costs, and oil costs.
  • It costs you money to dispose of waste.No one wants a landfill, and someone has to hall it away.
  • It costs you money to dispose of end-of-life products.

Now, if you would design for recycle:

  • You’d use less water producing every component you re-used.
  • You’d use less energy producing components.
  • You’d need less raw materials, as you’d be getting them back every time your customers upgraded.
  • Production would cost you less.
  • You’d have less waste to dispose of.
  • You wouldn’t have to worry about disposing of end of life products.They’d be recycled into next generation products.

Plus, your profits would soar as your green brand gained share in the minds and hearts of consumers everywhere. So take a page from David’s notebook. Put nature first and watch your bottom line improve. Going green saves green.

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Why a Sourceror’s Job is Never Done!

As pointed out in this recent piece on “responsive supply chains thru flexible warehouses” over on the ChainLink Research site, “optimal” does not last long. Demand changes, product mix changes, freight costs change, available carriers change, available suppliers change, raw material costs change, and so on.

It’s not just the warehouse. It’s the end-to-end supply chain operation. That’s why it’s crucial that not only are sourcing projects conducted for each category consistent with the cost cycles (and, specifically, when they tend to hit their low points if the organization is able to source at that time), but that each time the project is conducted, serious effort is put into analyzing and optimizing the buy. Because if the organization simply makes the same decision it made last time, it likely is not making the optimal one.

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From the Brink to Cash in the Bank – Supply Chain Management Can Save You Too

The SCMR is back, Quinn is still in charge, and it looks like he’s striving to maintain the quality that the SCMR was known for. I was quite impressed with one of the first articles on driving a turnaround in tumultouos times, which presented a case study on PolyOne and how it came back from the brink of bankruptcy. In March of 2009, it’s share price reached an abysmal low of $1.32. On May 27, it was $10.19. That’s an eightfold improvement in a little over a year and the reason analysts are now recommending it as a buy.

In the past year, it generated $218 Million of free cash flow and reduced its net debt by $233 Million. This is very significant given that it’s sales in 2009 were only 2.061 Billion as it means that PolyOne not only freed up 10% of their total sales for working capital but also managed to direct over 10% of their total sales to reduce their net debt. Plus, not only is their long term debt only 60% of what it was in 2005, but they went from a net loss of 273 Million in 2008 (when sales were 33% higher) to a net income of 68 Million in 2009, an incredible turnaround.

So how did they do this? Great supply chain management. Specifically:

  • Manufacturing RealignmentA series of mergers and acquisitions left PolyOne with over 40 global production facilities, considerably more than it needed to meet demand and mitigate risk. A detailed network analysis indicated that they could more than meet demand and mitigate risk with only 80% of manufacturing capability. This allowed them to close nine production facilities and significantly decrease operating costs.
  • Inventory ReductionAt the end of the third quarter in 2008, the company was carrying $331 Million in inventory, a number equal to 16% of sales in 2009 and an incredible cost. They undertook a two-day Kaizen event to identify opportunities to reduce inventory and cash-to-cash cycle times that identified consignment inventory reductions, opportunities to reduce costs by way of distributors, better inventory transfer practices with key suppliers, and opportunities to improve reorder points. Specifically the first thing they did was kill the re-order points that were on autopilot in the SAP MRP, which didn’t reflect the plummet in demand that came with the economic downturn. Moving to regular, manual review, helped them reduce inventory by $139 Million in just six months.
  • Process ImprovementsThrough numerous process improvements that included inventory stratification, PolyOne also reduced DSI, which dropped from 55 days in first quarter to 37 days in third quarter, while improving on-time delivery.
  • Greater Customer FocusManagement established the mindset that on-time delivery was critical and by improving customer focus, PolyOne improved on-time delivery from 81% in 2005 to 93% in 2009, a 15% improvement.

In short, it was supply chain that saved the day, and its the best practices described in this blog that will get you there. Get a strategy, manage your finances, lean your supply chain, improve your forecasts, optimize your inventory, analyze your opportunities, adopt e-Sourcing, and optimize your awards and you too can go from a net loss of 10% to a net income of 3% literally overnight, on your way to becoming a best in class supply chain company.

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