Published in DirectRelief on April 14, 2020 “Everyone is trying to increase capacity, and prioritizing, but they’re not going to increase it to a never-ending scale beyond what they know their ongoing needs are going to be,” comments Supply Chain Expert and Consultant, Lisa Anderson MBA, CSCP, CLTD President [...]
Inventory has emerged as a hot topic lately. In today’s Amazon-impacted business environment, customers expect rapid, customized deliveries, the ability to change their mind anytime and easy interactions (placing orders, returns etc.). Since clients are growing, they are also concerned with keeping up with the increasing volume. Thus, they [...]
There is no doubt. More than 50% of client requests in the last several months have related to inventory. In fact, it seems to be a trending hot topic! In today's era of the Amazon Effect where customers expect more and have ZERO patience to wait yet we are [...]
Alignment might sound like a fluffy concept but it delivers bottom line results. Our most successful clients have achieved the most substantial results from alignment. Although SIOP (Sales, Inventory, Operations Planning) gets a wrap as a technical topic, in our experience, it is the alignment portion of SIOP that delivers [...]
As we toured several e-commerce facilities such as UPS and Amazon, it became obvious that the sheer volume during peak season presents a huge dilemma. For example, UPS goes from 250-300 containers per night to 450 during peak season. Now that is quite a surge! Amazon has similar surges [...]
Resiliency isn't easy or every organization would have perfected it. Yet in today's volatile, Amazon impacted, disruption-heavy environment, you must build resilience. Let's start by talking about our meaning of resilience: we mean not only the ability to adjust and recover quickly to changing business conditions but also the [...]
March 26, 2018 Transportation capacity is tight and rates are on the rise -and it doesn't look like it will change anytime soon! The lack of qualified drivers, tighter enforcement of driver work rules and the dramatic changes brought on by e-commerce are creating challenges for shippers along with [...]
January 9, 2018 According to an Industry Week article, factories across the globe are showing signs of strain in keeping up with demand. China, Germany, France, Canada, the UK and the US all show that capacity might not be keeping up with supply. In fact, the U.S. reading from [...]
Setting strategy or designing a sales, inventory and operations planning (SIOP) process requires forecasting. How far into the future do you look and why? Whether setting strategy or designing a SIOP (sales, inventory and operations planning) process, one of the most important questions to consider is how far into [...]
March 28, 2017 According to Industry Week and the Reshoring Initiative, after two decades of job losses, we have turned the corner. In 2014, we had a net gain of 10,000 reshored jobs. And, clearly, this is picking up steam especially as we are in the thick of 2017. [...]
