By: Henry F. Camp This article will address issues caused by poor supplier due date performance on various types of businesses. Also covered will be the effect of these businesses’ natural reactions and their consequences. Once the undesirable effects are detailed, it would be cruel not to suggest some ways to permanently improve the […]
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Reducing the Damage of Expediting
By: Jerry C. Hahn No company today wants to turn away an order. Business is far too competitive and uncertain to lose any order and risk losing a customer. The struggle is universal across many businesses and industries. It does not matter if you are a large, medium, or small business. Everyone has to […]
How to Thrive with Inaccurate Forecasts
By: Erin Firestone The problem with forecasts is that they are guaranteed to be wrong. Many companies throw millions of dollars into fancy systems and software only to find little, if any improvement in the forecast, much less the bottom line. Sound familiar? It is possible for companies to thrive in the world of […]
How to Avoid Career Suicide When Changing Your Supply Chain
By: Linda Nowakowski The primary goal of any business is to make money. As a manager my job is to figure out a way to increase sales, reduce costs and lower investment. I have tried many things in the past but the changes only resulted in temporary gains. It is not so much that […]
Three Major Ways to Reduce Replenishment Time (Without Spending More Money)
By: Thomas N. DeMuth Decreasing lead times to the consumption point has dramatic impacts on inventory turns and obsolescence and, perhaps not as obviously, on sales. There are three simple approaches to reduce replenishment time without spending more money or adding systems. These approaches are actually policy changes. Policy changes require paradigm shifts which […]
Proving the Pull Concept
By: Henry F. Camp Implementing a whole new way to approach logistics and inventory management can be a daunting task. Since, prospective clients can’t anticipate all the implications of transitioning their supply chain from Push to Pull before taking the plunge, IDEA first suggests a test on a small scale. A Proof of Concept […]
The Paradigm Shift
By: Henry F. Camp The greatest difficulty lies not in persuading people to accept new ideas, but in persuading them to abandon old ones. – John Maynard Keynes Making our job more difficult, people naturally think in habitual patterns. This is normally a good thing, because without this skill, we could not recognize and […]
Who Needs Accurate Warehouse Inventory
By: Thomas Norbert DeMuth Introduction One of our clients supplies consumer goods to a large chain of retail stores. The retailer, with thousands of locations across the US, told us that shrinkage in their retail stores is over 10%, mainly due to theft. It was fascinating to us that this hugely profitable company did […]
The Theory of Constraints Approach to Improvement How Does It Fit with Lean and Six Sigma
By: Debra S. Renard Numerous process improvement methodologies have been proposed. Three of the most prominent are Six Sigma, Lean, and Theory of Constraints (TOC). How can you determine which methodology is the right one for your organization? While the ultimate goal of all three is to increase profit, their more immediate goals to […]
The Reason Logistics is Seldom Optimized
By: Henry F. Camp Most companies are held back by their logistics . Organizations do exactly what they are built to do. This article explores why logistics needs help and suggests a solution. Let me describe an example company. XYZ Corp. is a U.S. manufacturer of apparel. XYZ’s supply chain begins with buying cotton […]