Industry News Archives - Page 48 of 51

May 12, 2015January 30, 2016

The Supply Chain: 5/12/2015

A supply chain issue caused shortage in Apple’s new iWatch:

Taptic Engine components manufactured by AAC Technologies Holdings Inc. “started to break down over time,” a manufacturing defect that “people familiar with the matter” say caused Apple to throw out some watches that had already been built.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/04/wsj-taptic-engine-component-responsible-for-limited-apple-watch-supplies/
Big Company Supplier Squeeze – A Disturbing Trend Continues

Such attitudes are on display in a recent New York Times article that revealed that some sizable, global companies are now asking for 120 days – four months – to pay their suppliers. They are doing so even as they continue to require 30 days payment from their customers. This practice has been prevalent in the food and beverage industry, following the lead of Anheuser Busch who initiated these onerous payment terms on their suppliers back in 2008. The article suggests that many others in varying industries are now following suit not because they are in financial dire straits but, well, because they can.

http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/2015/05/07/big-company-supplier-squeeze–a-disturbing-trend-continues
Supply chains ‘extremely important’ to success of healthcare firms, says survey

“The importance of the supply chain in the competitive strategy of healthcare products companies is clear, and many companies in the field have committed to innovation in order to address the challenges described,” said the report. “But the modern supply chain is too complex for any one company to face on its own. Companies need to build a trusted network of experienced and reliable vendors.”

http://www.supplymanagement.com/news/2015/supply-chains-extremely-important-to-success-of-healthcare-firms-says-survey
How Strategic Sourcing Can Save a Bundle

A branch of the Texas Procurement and Support Services Division analyzed spending data for commonly purchased goods and services and developed new contracts to secure better prices. Contracts and vendor performance are monitored to ensure compliance. And in Texas as elsewhere, centralization of purchasing maximizes buying power and cost savings for agencies’ commonly competitively-purchased goods and services, while real time-data is used to make smart purchasing choices.

http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-how-strategic-sourcing-save-money-procurement.html

Note: These last two articles about “supply chain management is good” is the reason why this report isn’t published every week. Good, interesting content, is limited. The same basic ideas and statements are repeated each week. When I see something good or a great example, there will be a post.

April 28, 2015January 30, 2016

The Supply Chain: 4/28/2015

Where’s the payback in (supply chain) software?

One out of every two supply chain software deployments is falling short when it comes to delivering the expected return on the investment. That was the surprising finding of this year’s survey on supply chain software and how logistics professionals are using it. Designed as a follow-up to a study conducted last year, this year’s research looked specifically at which applications are most popular, what kind of payback they’re providing, and the challenges users face to successful deployment.

http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20150424-wheres-the-payback-in-software/
Press Release: Global Supply Chain Management BPO: Genpact Named Leader by Analyst Firm Everest Group

Genpact reduced a leading consumer packaged goods (CPG) company’s quality costs by 30 percent through a Kanban lean manufacturing process. It also designed, developed and deployed an integrated planning solution to reduce a global high tech security company’s finished goods inventory by 25 percent. Genpact also utilized a “should cost” analysis to help a top energy firm save $1 million in direct materials costs and save 60 percent time in parts negotiations.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/NY88443.htm
Top-performing supply chains: Pharmaceutical companies

We believe supply chain excellence is based on the ability to improve that portfolio of metrics. To help the reader, we have applied the model to different industries; this article looks at progress in the pharmaceutical sector. Progress in driving supply chain excellence in this sector is stalled. The reason? With a growth agenda and intense investment in research and development (R&D), growing regulation, and the building of global capabilities, the last decade has been a time of change for the global pharmaceutical companies. Their progress has not been equal to that in the consumer goods or food and beverage industries. The many mergers and acquisitions among companies in this category have also slowed progress in achieving supply chain excellence.

http://www.supplychainquarterly.com/articles/20150422-top-performing-supply-chains-pharmaceutical-companies/

April 15, 2015January 30, 2016

The Supply Chain: 4/15/2015

Demand growing for supply chain execs:

A new study from researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich—the first empirical attempt to document the presence and impact of supply chain managers on large U.S. firms—shows a long-term, gradual increase in the number of chief executives responsible for supply chain management, even though most firms have cut down on the size of their top management team. That’s great news for supply chain jockeys and their advocates. But the study also contains a bit of not-so-great news. It turns out that firms that have a chief supply chain officer (CSCO) post lower operating profit margins than those without one.

http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Demand-Growing-for-Supply-Chain-Execs?gko=97bcd
B2B integration and the supply chain:

When it comes to supply chain management, the research indicates that 51 percent of high tech companies can process an invoice in under on hour, and 84 precent of CPG companies have an average customer delivery time of less than seven days. That same research indicates that 97 percent of CPG companies have an average time to market in less than 120 days.

http://www.pymnts.com/news/2015/b2b-integration-and-the-supply-chain/
Supply Chain Innovation Unloads Elevated Demand For MBA Talent

Traditional supply chains will radically change over the next five to 10 years as a result of new technologies. Companies surveyed by Deloitte and MHI expect to invest heavily in new supply chain tech in the next two years, with the top 17% spending over $10 million.

http://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-careers/3202/mba-jobs-supply-chain-innovation

April 8, 2015January 30, 2016

The Supply Chain: 4/8/2015

IBM actually sells off a portion of their supply chain software (not Emptoris) to LlamaSoft:

Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Llamasoft said it will buy IBM’s LogicNet Plus, the Inventory and Product Flow Analyst, and IBM’s Transportation Analyst products. Llamasoft has been growing fast in recent years due to increased interest in the company’s specialties of supply chain modeling, analytics and optimization. Under the transaction, Llamasoft will absorb the IBM supply chain technology and support team.

http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20150401-llamasoft-acquires-ibms-supply-chain-application-suite/
SAP Looks To Procurement Services Market To Boost Revenues, Protect Margins

Corporate procurement services is a lucrative market that’s already served by software bigwigs like Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) and Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM). Research firm Frost & Sullivan estimates that the B2B online retail market will grow to $6.7 trillion by 2020 due to rapid adoption of online purchasing platforms. [2] Corporate procurement service providers stand to make billions of dollars in fees by providing cloud-based platforms and management services to facilitate such online purchases by big companies.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3046296-sap-looks-to-procurement-services-market-to-boost-revenues-protect-margins
SAP is also expanding their software offerings:

By developing a product innovation platform, the connected products portfolio is capable of managing and integrating customer-driven engineering innovations by coordinating every ‘business function’ and ‘bill of material requirements.’ This portfolio will not only deliver considerable improvement over existing solutions but also develop new functionality, which will make manufacturing companies more responsive to customer demand.

http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/169617/sap-brings-extended-solution-portfolio-for-improved-scm
Supply Chain as as source of compliance innovation (this doesn’t sound familiar does it?)

To truly understand your compliance risk from all third parties, including those in the Supply Chain, you have to get out of the ivory tower and on the road. This is even truer when exploring innovation. You do not have hit the road with the “primary goal to be the inception point for innovation” but through such interactions, innovation can come about “organically”. There is little downside for a compliance practitioner to go and visit a Supply Chain partner and have a “face-to-face meeting simply to get to know the partner better and more precisely identify that partner’s needs.”

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/supply-chain-as-a-source-of-compliance-i-72976/
This article gets a little to “ra-ra” and not enough real world example for my taste, but I like the idea.
Here is another post detailing the shift from traditional procurement to a big data/business intelligence area (more of a POS/Retail view, but the concept is sound).
http://www.internationalsupermarketnews.com/news/18577

April 1, 2015January 30, 2016

The Supply Chain: 4/1/2015

Supply Chain News: Strategic Sourcing Software Enabling Companies to Continue to Raise the Bar on Capabilities, Gartner Says
http://www.scdigest.com/ONTARGET/15-03-26-1.PHP?cid=9138&ctype=content
Dunkin Donuts saves $114 million thanks to SCM cooperative

Formed following the successful merger of five different operating companies in 2012, NDCP opened its corporate office in metro Atlanta in August 2013 as a more geographically central location to support customer expansion plans and access best-in-class supply chain resources. Leveraging more than 30 years of proven expertise in sourcing, purchasing and distribution, the organisation is passionate about delivering the best service and products at the lowest sustainable price to members.

http://www.supplychaindigital.com/supplychainmanagement/3889/Dunkin-Donuts-saves-114-million-thanks-to-SCM-cooperative
Resetting supplier relationships should be top of the board agenda

Procurement has often been viewed as the poor relation when it comes to business strategy, but there is clear evidence that corporate reputation and customer satisfaction can be directly affected by poor or non-strategic purchasing decisions. For example, an organisation we have worked with took a strategic decision never to charge a customer for speaking to the customer service department, only to discover some months later that one of its outsourced call centre providers was still using premium rate numbers. Clearly no one had told the procurement department about the strategic decision, let alone involved them in formulating the strategy in the first place. Being more joined up can only be good for business

http://www.supplymanagement.com/blog/2015/03/resetting-supplier-relationships-should-be-top-of-the-board-agenda
Procurement professionals split on how to tackle maverick spend

Almost one third (31 per cent) of respondents from public and private sectors said control of indirect spend should be handed to the procurement function to solve the problem, even though indirect costs appear to be the shared responsibility of a number of different departments within the respondent organisations: procurement (63 per cent), senior department heads (42 per cent), finance (39 per cent) and operational staff (25 per cent).

http://www.supplymanagement.com/news/2015/procurement-professionals-split-on-how-to-tackle-maverick-spend