Supply Chain Management

This is based on my recent project experience with one of the leading networking companies in US, which is running its strategic supply chain performance improvement initiative globally. Usually, companies tend to implement such initiatives as a pilot for a select few customers and markets and once the pilot is run for a certain period of time, it is rolled out to other areas incorporating learnings from the pilot phase. The rolling out of such strategic initiatives to all the markets globally is imperative to achieve the desired financial benefits, finally leading to revenue and profit growth.  The key is the global execution that becomes a real challenge in a global scenario, especially when it demands a significant amount of investment in terms of time, cost, talent and effort from teams located regionally.

Continue reading "Outsourcing in supply chain – a unique way to deploy global supply chain programs" »

Posted by Aatish Goel at 05:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have had several discussions with clients and prospects in the last few weeks regarding their supply chain related transformation initiatives.  Despite (or perhaps driven by) the macroeconomic challenges, most of the companies I have come across are moving forward with such transformation initiatives.  It’s possible that there’s a sampling bias here and I may only be in touch with those companies that are actively pursuing a supply chain related transformation program.  Irrespective, I consider that the good news.

However, as you might have guessed, there’s some bad news too.  Let me illustrate the bad news with a specific example of a client that I recently met.  This is a large F100 class company with a well-known track record in supply chain excellence. The client organization is expanding in new markets and channels and is clearly hurting in the supply chain aspect of that expansion.  The challenges exist at multiple levels – strategic issues of where/how to compete at one end and tactical issues of supply chain execution at the other.  The challenges the client organization faces are, however, so significant that the organization seems completely consumed by it.  Each individual seems to have their own view of what the #1 issue is.  There doesn’t seem to be a clear prioritization based on shareholder value (or similar metric) and no clear roadmap that helps resolve the various perceived #1 priorities.  So the bad news is that some clients are finding themselves in a situation of panic where “we are so busy that we don’t have time to prioritize”.  Are you seeing a growing sense of ‘do something’ panic around you?

Posted by Sharad Elhence at 07:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

With recession fears taking over large swathes of economy and the new mantra - actually pretty old really - being "cash is king", how would this impact SCM as a domain? There’s a fundamental business angle to this and then there’s an IT program/project side to the story as well. At its core, SCM needs to look at three constituents, suppliers at one end (including the folks toiling for you in the intermediate chains), customers at the other end (retail or B2B across various channels) and the partners through the supply chain, primarily your logistics providers (the movers).

Continue reading "SCM in a time of downturn" »

Posted by Gopikrishnan GR at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After doing a deep-dive into the procurement professional’s role in green supply chains in my previous post, I cannot resist but take a step “up” to offer my view on whether Green supply chains are here to stay

I have come across several voices, discussions, posts and opinions that speak about the “falseness” of this entire green movement. That companies are resorting to green initiatives not because of their new found love for environment but instead, are suavely marketing their cost cutting initiatives under a green cloak to win some social brownie points. Compounding this situation is the fact that some companies are blatantly misleading the public on their green campaigns (Terrachoice, an environmental marketing agency, in a survey on green claims of six category leading big-box stores reviewed 1018 products and found all, except one, making a claim that mislead audiences).

Continue reading "Are Green Supply Chains here to stay?" »

Posted by Amit Tambi at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While I’m not aware of a precise estimate, I’m sure that several billion dollars are invested each year in hardware, software, and services by companies across industries – manufacturing, distribution, retail, utility services, and others – to improve their supply chain performance.

Continue reading "Do the Supply Chain improvement projects justify the investment?" »

Posted by Sharad Elhence at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If I were “environment”, I wouldn’t have had it better. At-least not since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The two words - “environment sustainability” - have been in circulation like never before (thanks, I must say, to the humongous success of the award winning documentary “An inconvenient truth”). No wonder then that a Google search gives more than 3.3 million results.

Continue reading "Hasn’t it always been about sustainability" »

Posted by Amit Tambi at 06:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Very recently I had the good fortune of having an hour long conversation with CIO of one of our very reputed client organizations. The organization is a leading 10 billion USD+ entity with an illustrious history in the area of Imaging. The client organization has 3 concurrent tools for forecasting used by different internal businesses, a few mainframe applications involved in doing factory level production planning and SAP's evolving solution in the area of supply chain in general. The organization has thus lived and evolved with its supply chain landscape starting all the way from mainframe applications, to best-of-breed and now ERP II planning applications.

Continue reading "CIO's view of Integration of Supply Chain Applications" »

Posted by K. Srinivas at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, I was at the IBM Consultants & System Integrators (CSI) conference at Goa, a wonderfully event-managed event where to my utter delight, even verbose senior folks were brutally cut down from their loquaciousness by the time-keeper's flag. I was invited since Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is one of the domains I head in my portfolio here at SCM practice. IBM, as many of you would know got into EAM in a big way post acquisition of Maximo app from MRO software. But this post is less on EAM and more on a topic I'm thinking and reading up a little bit these days - end2end SCM and more specifically - why should it just remain at a domain level and not be inclusive all the way down at a deeper infra level?

Continue reading "End2End SCM can go deeper than the just functions" »

Posted by Gopikrishnan GR at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Demand and Supply go hand-in-hand. One would be forgiven to associate such a statement with best-in-class supply chain supported by best-in-class IT support systems. This could be a distant dream for few other aspirants. However what I am referring to is the not-so-obvious-but-omnipresent power sector.

Continue reading "Energy Sector and the Supply Chain" »

Posted by K. Srinivas at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 Of late, I’ve been noticing an increasing appearance of the term “On-demand SCM” in the web-world. Inscrutable as it sounds the first time, what got me thinking was the obvious overlap in most articles between SCM as a function as SCM as a collection of IT systems. Standing behind the many wonders of IT-enabled supply chains (and being completely blinded of everything else), we may be forgiven (or burnt-at-stake, depending on who you're asking) for assuming SCM equals SCM apps/integration (Akin to arguing that “child is INDEED the father of man”!)

Continue reading "The advent of "on-demand" SCM" »

Posted by Gopikrishnan GR at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

....everyday, i get 4-5 articles, saying -("A" is looking at Hosted) ("B" is already performing on hosted)  & for ("C" its hosted, all the way), i really wonder if thats the way ahead for product companies to have that "Non-Linear growth pattern", but if everyone goes the hosted way does this mean that, no more consulting, no more consultants

Is the future just going to work in a way "that customers give master and related data en routed through secure VPN's to get businesses running in future, will there still be Business Blueprinting" will there ever be a necessity for consultants to help customer's adapt to Products, still bringing in their domain expertise to mash the product to suit their requirements", will the services companies merge with the product companies, Will there ever be any work for consultants any more, read more.....

Continue reading "SaaS aka Hosted : I think, thats where everyone's heading, how apprehensive do consultants feel?" »

Posted by Tridip Chakraborthy at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)