Supply Chain Management

IBM’s annual service management fest Pulse concluded last week in Las Vegas (21st – 24th Feb 2010). What an event! This was one of the most well organized events I have attended thus far. While the attendance was close to around 5000+ customers and business partners (1000+), it felt like being in an Oracle Open World which usually has 30,000+ attendees. Sessions were well organized and distributed across tracks. I especially liked the separation of topics between general session and the track session. The general sessions were very helpful in providing overall IBM’s approach in the service management space.

Continue reading "Smarter planet through smarter asset management – Pulse 2010" »

Posted by Atul Chandra Pandey at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Automating Accounts Payable for Facility Management Firms" »

Posted by Suresh Patel at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last month, Infosys got a call from Supply Chain Digest magazine, courtesy the editor-in-chief Dan Gilmore to air our views on the key trends for Supply Chain Management in 2010. Supply Chain Guru Predictions for 2010 published earlier this month covered a set of 5 other eminent folks from MIT, Gartner, Descartes and so on, so I was happy for the opportunity to be featured amongst these industry thought leaders.

As primarily a package supply chain enabler, I stuck to my knitting and covered my theme along two lines (a) Improving efficiencies in the back-end supply chain to reduce costs and (b) Enhancing end-customer experience by augmenting the front-end supply chain. People ask me where the relentless pressure to slay every efficiency killer would end up. What next after Multi-channel commerce, end2end procurement, green asset management... whither goes SCM end-state?

Continue reading "Supply Chain Predictions for 2010 - how far are we from our end-state vision?" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Tesco to Less CO: Can Tesco save the world?" »

Posted by Suresh Patel at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We do not inherit the earth from our parents, but borrow it from our children.

On December 7, 2009 global leaders and environment ministers from all over the world will meet in Copenhagen to discuss about climate change. Climate scientists are convinced the world must stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and start making them fall very soon. Corporations are discussing the implications of de-carbonizing the economy on their businesses. Some corporations are sincere in taking sustainability on whereas some are embracing it as a pure PR exercise. Whatever the reason, there was never a stronger impetus on sustainability than today.

Continue reading "Enterprise Asset Sustainability" »

Posted by Suresh Patel at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently attended Gartner’s IT Financial, Procurement & Asset Management summit in Orlando, FL (www.gartner.com/us/itam ). In line with Gartner image and spirit of shaping up and defining what’s hot and what’s not in the IT world, the summit was organized to present the current state and trends in IT Fin, Procurement and Asset Management world and would have certainly appealed to IT benchmark and best practice seekers.

Sessions were organized by tracks and during each timeslot, each track had a session going on a specific topic. I think this was done primarily to maximize the participation, which I believe was a good strategy as most of the sessions I attended were full house. I primarily attended ITAM sessions, though would have loved to attend the procurement ones as well (my portfolio included procurement services).

Continue reading "Leveraging Value from IT Asset Management – Insights from Gartner ITAM Summit" »

Posted by Atul Chandra Pandey at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In my first blog I talked about the ten commandments of Physical Asset Management in which the first rule stated:

Thou shall identify critical equipments that provide goods or services that delight customers

Enterprise asset management was traditionally seen as an internal function of an organization with minimal impact on customer satisfaction.  With the advent of the service economy an organization’s focus has shifted on to the customer. There is a paradigm shift in the way asset management is viewed. It now has two important aspects – Critical Assets and Customer Delight. Asset Performance Management is the new buzz word with focus on delivering customer delight.

Continue reading "Critical Assets: Manage them Right for Customer Delight" »

Posted by Suresh Patel at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently got a chance to go through an interestingly titled research report from Bill Polk of AMR going by the headline "Asset Management Algebra: EAM = ROI". In these times of increasingly deficient attention-spans, reading a 2-pager is always better than reading a 20-pager with authors belaboring the same point in multiple ways.

Apart from the usual benefits of EAM (ROCE, efficiency improvements, structured information etc) and its new found importance (movement from tactical to strategic), an interesting point which I haven't come across in many other places was about "Capturing and preserving data from an aging workforce". While implementing EAM systems, we typically think of labor management (thru the EAM app or via a little help from more high brow "Workforce Management Systems or WFMs") as a way to capture skills of the maintenance personnel thus making sure the right party is assigned to the right work order.

Continue reading "Tapping Collective Maintenance Wisdom - An EAM Route?" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Air France flight AF447 disappears between Brazil and France with 228 people of board. Investigators suspect that the speed sensors (also known as Pitot tubes) may have been a major factor. Flight 447 had been flying in stormy weather that may have included icing. This can block the Pitot tubes, which then give false information to the pilots causing them to fly too fast or too slow leading to a crash.

Continue reading "Decalogue of Physical Asset Management" »

Posted by Suresh Patel at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the major thrusts we have been seeing with IBM of late is the "smarter planet" campaign. Stripped off the hype (justifiable for any marketing campaign), its a terrific way to differentiate oneself from mundane IT related offerings to something truly (in the real sense of the term) transformational. Back in April, CNN Money had am exhaustive article on the same topic titled "IBM's grand plan to save the planet", with the byline "Here is CEO Sam Palmisano's formula for changing the world: Find problems, throw in billions of dollars in R&D, add consultants and an earnest ad campaign - and watch the profits roll in."

Continue reading "Smarter Planet makes Smarter SIs too, especially if it's EAM" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Rising Energy consumption – do we have a fitting response in Asset Management?" »

Posted by Amit Tambi at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A strong maintenance strategy for micro assets may not be the most comprehensive way of ensuring unhindered business operations. Whilst the maintenance manager sweats out on tidying the trees, the CEO is ultimately responsible for the entire woods. What are the things beyond his control? Drought, Floods, Landslides, tsunamis or any other natural disasters. How about arson, terror attacks? Sole policy of paying  fat premiums to insurance companies (that can themselves falter and go bankrupt) would not be enough.

Continue reading "Contribute - 3rd of the 3C's of Sustenance" »

Posted by Kiran Mandrekar at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Hurricane Preparedness: Pre and Post activities" »

Posted by Kiran Mandrekar at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Preventing accidents in an office environment could be as easy as putting a notice in front of a shredding machine that reminds us to secure our Tie ends. But how about this …..stormy night , deep sea  oil platform, 13th day of the hitch and a 16 inch rusty valve to be turned ….where should we put a cartoon poster?

Continue reading "Safety using Asset Management System" »

Posted by Kiran Mandrekar at 07:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)