Retail
July 5, 2022
Since this might soon become a necessity at your store here are five tips for a successful batch pick, pack and ship process from your store.
Demand Planning
October 10, 2018
Although no business likes carrying safety stock, experiencing a stockout simply isn’t worth the risk to customer satisfaction. Take an industry-informed look at how to achieve demand planning ‘greatness’ when it comes to optimizing your inventory levels and still meeting customer requirements.
Analytics
May 2, 2018
In the January-March 2018 issue of APICS magazine, APICS CEO Abe Eshkenazi contends that if supply chain leaders bring business success then that makes them business leaders. Mr. Eshkenazi goes on to state “organizations that consider their supply chains as strategic and competitive assets outperform the market”.
December 19, 2017
I just read a blog post entitled How do you feel when someone mentions predictive analytics? Well, I feel like it’s a good thing. How about you?
September 7, 2017
Seasonal variations in consumption occur for many reasons; summer, back to school, various holidays. In fact, most industries experience annually recurring spikes in demand — even healthcare as they prepare for the dreaded flu season. Furthermore, the duration of a season differs depending on geography and demographics.
August 15, 2017
With greater awareness and increasing environmental pressures, more companies are incorporating green distribution practices into their activities.
June 9, 2016
There is a famous anecdote about Volvo car dealers heavily discounting green models because consumers preferred other colors. Volvo’s manufacturing plant, seeing the resulting spike in demand for green models, perceived it as consumer interest and upped the production. That’s right…even more green cars! Ouch!!
June 17, 2015
When supply chain professionals plan for future demand, their thoughts gravitate to meeting customer service levels while minimizing the amount of capital tied up in inventory. Demand planning and warehouse inventory management is about having the right product in the right place at the right time … right? Four occurrences of the same word would cause my old English teacher to shudder at this excessive use of a word in a single sentence. However, let us return to the important business of meeting consumer demand without incurring the cost of excess inventory.
February 10, 2015
Improved forecast accuracy leads to many downstream improvements in operations and ultimately, on the balance sheet. That is why Gartner, Inc., a highly respected information technology research and advisory firm, puts forecast accuracy at the top of its pyramid of supply chain metrics. In a study published in February 2012, Gartner stated that a 6% forecast improvement could improve the perfect order by 10% and deliver a 10-15% reduction in unnecessary inventory.
February 5, 2015
Back in the mid-nineties, I attended a conference on business forecasting. The focus was on the science of statistical forecasting, and, well...I may have drifted off during the second half hour of discussions on Winters’ triple exponential smoothing.
January 28, 2015
Forecastability is an important word in demand planning. Oddly, the word forecastability is not listed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary nor is it found in Wikipedia. However Wiktionary describes forecastability as “A measure of the degree to which something may be forecast with accuracy”. That something could be an item used in the production of a finished good or the finished good itself.
April 3, 2012
Trust. Hard to gain, easy to lose, and widely discussed in supply chain management in healthcare. Typically, trust is limited, and the lack of it is limiting our ability to work together. So how do we, as supply chain participants, create it? The answer is multifactorial; however, one key component is communication. An easy channel for communication is data and metrics, and heaven knows we have data!
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