Last week I wrote about my mistake of not paying enough attention to the math behind Return on Investment (ROI). I got a few comments from readers that made me think of elaborating from a Supply Chain planner’s point of view for why everyone in the supply chain should learn the ROI math.
In many companies we see a lack of alignment between the three corners of the Supply Chain Triangle, so let's take the triangle into three dimensions and explain the concept of the “best practice frontier”.
One of the biggest mistakes a supply chain planner can do is have an aversion to learning the math behind ROI (Return on Investment) that can come from working on a business’s supply chain plans.
What will the Supply Chain be like in the year 2020? In the evolution of supply chain, people, process and technologies must be aligned correctly to achieve maximum results, and leaders must connect the dots to ensure supply chain becomes more market driven.
We believe that when building your supply chain career, you should build in lateral moves, growing both horizontally and vertically. Will you have the necessary skills to build the supply chain of the future, balancing service, cost and cash, in order to maximize ROCE?
When launching an inventory reduction program, success is contingent on keeping the Supply Chain Triangle in balance. However, keeping Cash, Cost and Service in balance may prove difficult for a traditional supply chain organization whether the business is a success or if it is struggling. Please read more to learn how to deal with pressure within the Supply Chain Triangle.
Sometimes companies implement a forecasting system but do not realize the anticipated gains in the forecast accuracy. Very often, it is not the actual software but the setup that is to be blamed. And I do not mean the setup at the technical (parameter level) but more the process level. Read this blog post on how to get the setup right.
Have you just started a customer-product segmentation project? Sales is king, but you need to define a strategy and carefully plan which customers and products to grow, and which opportunities are the right ones to seize. Read this post from Bram for many useful ideas.
Looking for the characteristics of an excellent supply chain? Look no further. Many colleagues have provided their input on the topic. Also look for the first part of this post from a few weeks ago.
The traditional approach of doing a software technology project has been to do blueprinting, followed by software selection and then implementation. In this post, Bram argues that it is time to shake things up and do it differently.