Supply Chain Management

Last week I had a wonderful opportunity to spend over an hour with two senior folks from a client of ours who offers imaging solutions. The CFO and program manager who visited us were both from the Europe arm which runs with a certain level of autonomy. The formal discussion topic was WMS, but as it goes in the SCM-world, we did go forwards and backwards quite a bit, into other functions including OMS, visibility, transportation etc. I returned to my desk with two interesting learning points to ponder over.

Continue reading "Moving from product delivery to managed services - two supply chain caveats to ponder over" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 07:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With supply chain professionals squeezed by supply chain complexity and volatility, efficient Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) has become an organizational imperative.

Continue reading "What it takes to build a robust S&OP model?" »

Posted by Atul Chandra Pandey at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apart from being skilled and experienced in managing relationships with suppliers and managing the resulting relationships in the same region, but Negotiating with suppliers in various global regions can bring unexpected challenges that can sabotage negotiations and relationships can challenge those are strong in domestic markets

Continue reading "Negotiating one of the key skills for procurement professionals" »

Posted by Nilesh Dhoble at 04:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As a customer I have always been frustrated by the clutter created, and the effort required to manage my store sale receipts. More often than not, Murphy strikes, and I cannot seem to find the very same receipt on which a return/exchange needs to be made. Other than the frustrations that a customer like me has to go through in organizing/retaining store receipts, these receipts are also an environmental and procurement problem.

Continue reading "Do you really want the Paper Receipt …?" »

Posted by Sameer Prashar at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

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)

According to Gartner and Celent, it costs the average real estate company $21.00 per invoice to manually process paper invoices. Most people are shocked to learn this. Multiply this to the tens of thousands of invoices a facility management firm process every year and this amounts to a fairly significant administrative cost. Automating accounts payable reduces much of the labour and materials associated with paying bills, thereby saving time and money.

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

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

Opportunities galore when it comes to pruning down cost in Supply Chains. Firms focus both internally i.e. within their own house and also externally by partnering with their customers and suppliers. But in their singular objective to cut cost, firms often focus narrowly and tend to forget that cost cutting initiatives ought to apply to the whole chain. If a firm benefits at the expense of its suppliers and/or customers, it is power play and gaming at its best (and supply chain partnerships at its worst).

 

Continue reading "Removing Cost from your Supply Chain - Push it OUT not DOWN" »

Posted by Amit Tambi at 07:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Work process effectiveness has direct impact on the profitability of the overall business it supports. As the saying goes, a good process is required to develop a great product; it is essential for businesses to review their current processes for improvements in areas like work style and collaboration, cycle times, accuracy, emotions and essentially TCO- Total Cost of Ownership.

Continue reading "Work Bench for improving Supply Chain Effectiveness" »

Posted by Shan Latheef at 02:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, this blog of mine is focused very specifically to ‘demand planning’ role in a supply chain organization. Most of us would appreciate the difficult conflicting goals that a demand planner faces in industry, and I believe, it is becoming increasingly more stressful for them to manage these goals. Being a demand planner myself in the past, I can empathize with their pain and would like to share few operational challenges that add to their stress levels, if not attended effectively. I would urge each one of you to provide your experience, comments, and advise how demand planners can effectively work to mitigate these issues to improve business performance. Read on…

Continue reading "Are Demand Planners stressed out these days?" »

Posted by Aatish Goel at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was recently sitting in a café a flipping through a magazine on Green Architecture for Retailers. It included the entire gamut of retailers - apparel vendors through grocery vendors and how they wanted their stores to be green; Emphasis on green paints, green lights, recyclable paper towels and so on; the investments and the returns thereof; testimonials that justified the idea, the ones that stressed on the longevity of these implementations and those that cautioned the reader.

 

Continue reading "Technical Architecture and the silos thereof...." »

Posted by Guruprasad B. Nagaraja at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most retailers have three primary channels: stores, catalog, and online. A catalog offers a great selection of products in a medium that customers are comfortable with and providing service through a contact center allows ample opportunity for cross-sells and up-sells. The online channel has even greater selection plus integration with social networks, user reviews, easy comparison shopping with other retailers and the convenience of shopping at convenience. The traditional brick and mortar stores let the customers handle and play with products, return items in person, carry them home with you that day and talk with a salesperson if they have questions. The advent of Mobile commerce and growth of the convergence phenomena across the digital world through 'augmented reality' and 'ubiquitous connectivity' has led to unique opportunities for retailers to leverage in developing another channel for commerce as well as enhance the capabilities of existing channels.

 

Continue reading "Augmented Reality and Multi Channel Retail- Unifying the Customer Touchpoints" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog of mine is different from the rest. Here I am not going to analyze data, neither am I going to profess inferences….. I am going to ask you about your opinion on certain very key factors which impact risks in supply chain. I was in a discussion with the Head of Supply Chain of a large manufacturing house, and some of his views on managing suppliers for their supply chain intrigues me.  That is the reason I am looking out to seek your opinion on some of the aspects of supply chain.

Continue reading "How do you protect yourself from small supplier’s BIG issues?" »

Posted by Sudripto De at 05:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | 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)

The 2009 holiday buying season in the U.S. and indeed worldwide, presented two important learnings for the retail industry.  First, more consumers turned to online channels to perform price and feature comparisons as well as to execute their purchases.  Online channels were reported as being up 4-5% through mid-December of 2009.  One of the most significant takeaways from this year’s National Retail Federation (NRF) conference was that cost and value conscious consumers have discovered that online shopping and integrated merchandising are becoming a far more attractive option, and these same consumers demand more of these experiences.  The ability to research products, place orders online, pick-up or return purchases at the nearest local retail outlet have captured enormous interest, and consumers demand that these experiences occur without a glitch.

Continue reading "The Imperative for Retailers to Assess Multi-Channel Operations Capabilities as a Prelude to Multi-Channel Commerce" »

Posted by Guest at 05:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Often times, organizations hold CFR or the Customer Fulfilment Rate as one of the key meterics Customer Service Organization are measured against. Certain best-in-class supply chains boast of CFRs in their high nineties. However one question that all organizations should answer is - what is the quality of the CFRs ?

Continue reading "Chasing the right Q or "Cue" on your CFRs" »

Posted by K. Srinivas at 02:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My last blog finished with Joe Shmoe finding out that despite all his research and time spent deciding on which TV to buy, the store is out of stock for that particular model. The retailer is now in the unenviable position of losing the sale despite having invested a lot of resources in advising the customer and facilitating his Find, Decide and Buy decision. 

The ultimate objective of the retailer is to provide an environment and processes which facilitate the customer in buying products they want i.e. convert the need or intent to buy into a sale. Product availability is one of the key drivers for making this happen. However the supply chain mantra of keeping it 'lean and mean' implies that ensuring product availability is always a balancing act where the retailer juggles with the conflicting principles of lowering inventory carrying costs while preventing loss of sales due to unavailability of stock.

Continue reading "Retail Customer Order Management Blog Series: Part 2 – The Retail Order" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In the prior blog on this topic, I had described a few value chain trends for Y2010 and beyond. In this blog, I will outline a few technology trends linked to these value chain trends.

Continue reading "Y2010 & Ahead – value chain trends in emerging economy – Part 2 (Technology Trends)" »

Posted by Atul Chandra Pandey at 02:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It takes a crisis to bring out the best of our innovation and constructive potential. A crisis helps us focus on finding and doing the right things and breaking the barriers and maintaining status quo.  This has been a common theme for most of my clients who I have been associated with in Y2009. As the economic recovery seems to be taking roots, I anticipate the following trends to strengthen especially in the manufacturing sector, as we look at Y2010 and beyond.

Continue reading "Y2010 & Ahead – value chain trends in emerging economy – Part 1" »

Posted by Atul Chandra Pandey at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Reading about the Toyota Accelerator Pedal recall (around 2.3 million vehicles to quote a figure), one can’t help but wonder how a company with its squeaky clean quality and safety reputation, a temple of learning for supplier collaboration processes, could falter on such a grand scale.

Continue reading "Et Tu Toyota …" »

Posted by Sameer Prashar at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

In continuation with earlier blogs, we had an interesting set of conversations in the past one month within the project team. One of the ideas through the brainstorming and subsequent brain-streamlining session, was to provide capability in the tool to store realtime Allotment limits in the sales order. An interesting revelation was that one could arrive at this figure only if we use another parameter called the Checking Horizon.

Continue reading "Dilemma of Supply Chain Planning in an Allotment scenario - 4" »

Posted by K. Srinivas at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I currently consult across multiple clients. They all are retailers, in different segments. At one retailer, we are defining a roadmap for a order management solution. In the course of our discussions, a question keeps getting raised about the sale made in the store: Is that an order?

You walk into my store, you pick something up, want to buy it, take it to the register, pay for it and take it home. In this entire transaction, you interacted with my company. You took something out of my inventory and paid me cash. In retail lexicon, this would be called a sale. However, if you were a business, and sent me a purchase order, and I responded by creating a sales order and then shipped it to you and invoiced you, the sales order is what would be called a order.

So, a customer transaction in store is a sale, and a B2B transaction is obviously an order. What about an e-commerce B2C transaction? Other than the fact that the customer's ship to address, payment information, and bill to address is available with me, how is this different from a sale? Should I encourage my sale to grow up and become an order?

Continue reading "My sale wants to grow up and become an order" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 03:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog got triggered by a series of events that I experienced recently. We were asked recently to analyze a 'simple' retail and online integration for enabling the order management and fulfillment process for kiosk orders which were placed and paid for in the store. Lack of existing documentation forced us to go to the store multiple times to place 'test' orders for elaborating the various scenarios. Some of our experiences have been documented in a previous blog by my colleague Sameer.
 
This actual 'cross channel' experience combined with a similar large implementation for an earlier client convinced me that I should spend some time providing an introduction to Retail Customer Order Management and its specific nuances and challenges. My focus is not to describe the traditional order management process typically associated with a single channel i.e. the steps required for managing the lifecycle of an online order or a retail replenishment order but instead highlight the cross channel benefits and challenges of managing a customer order from a retail stores perspective. 

Continue reading "Retail Customer Order Management Blog Series: Part 1 - An Introduction" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 05:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last month, I was in UK for one of our retail clients to conduct a short workshop to assess the impact on existing system landscape, as they plan to implement Sterling Commerce order management suite to replace legacy order management. Multi channel order management programs typically end up as highly integration intensive solutions.  In such a solution, cut over and the rollout planning tends to become complex.

Continue reading "Multi Channel Order Management Go Live: How early should you plan Cutover/Rollout?" »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the key objectives in the existing challenging environments is to develop long-term, productive relationships with the internal customers who are stakeholders within the procurement business team. This is interesting observation and SRM techniques can help organizations in building strong relationship with internal customers through foothold strategies that leverage long term relationship.

Continue reading "Leveraging SRM techniques to build business teams" »

Posted by Nilesh Dhoble at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Great news awaits students expecting to launch their careers in supply chain. The SCOR Scholar (SCOR-S) certification program has been launched by Supply Chain Council in 2010-2011. Designed for university students who do not yet possess significant on-the-job experience, SCOR-S certification will demonstrate a basic understanding of how to use the SCOR Framework for supply chain management. “The SCOR Scholar certification will be one of the only programs in the world that provides students professional certification of a methodology for managing supply chain performance,” says Caspar Hunsche, SCC Chief Technology Officer. “In addition to core supply chain management knowledge, SCOR-S certification will send a strong signal to potential employers of a student’s interest and ability to excel at a supply chain career.” A detailed training catalog can be downloaded from Supply Chain Council. Workshops include SCOR Framework, Implementation, Integration, Benchmarking, Performance based Logistics (PBL), Cost Modeling and Supply Chain Risk Management. In a way, such specialized training programs open thinking and real-world practice possibilities for students. Besides, such forums and certifications bring relationships with SCOR practitioners and teachers who meet and resolve practical supply chain challenges in their day to day operations. Let’s discuss the significance of the SCOR-R certification. Students can get an insight into supply chain basics and industry processes from experts. Understanding of SCOR benchmarks and process drivers by specific industries help align supply chain academic knowledge with indicators one must look for to realize business performance. Next, such certification helps students edge out competition when it comes to presenting themselves to prospective employers. Ability to relate to critical aspects causing a business constraints become clearer compared to trivial facts. Inter-relationships between various operational entities are key to finding a resolve to today’s supply chain problems. The SCOR-R experience will enable students to balance supply chain risks and rewards more effectively. This is just a few from the list of many benefits that students can gain from this certification from the Supply Chain Council. Well started is half done. This cannot be truer especially when it comes to beginning a career in an exciting profession of supply chain.

Posted by Shan Latheef at 02:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So the “Report cards” of the automotive manufacturers in US are out!! There are contrasting realities and some startling facts!!!. Do the Japanese and American car manufacturers behave the same way in the face of recession? How do their manufacturing and supply chain strategies reflect on their overall performance? Are there any “dark horses” among the American manufacturers who would pose the biggest threats to the Japanese in future? Are there laggards among the Japanese who would have to face the threat of survival in future? The numbers convey their behavior!!

Continue reading "Automotive manufacturers of 2009: Numbers convey their Supply Chain behavior" »

Posted by Sudripto De at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sterling Commerce recently announced mobile applications for their Order Management application. Sterling Mobile Store Channel and Sterling Store Associate Mobile app for iPhone allow customers as well as business employees to search for products, place orders and track shipments through their iPhones. While discussing these new developments with business users at my current client, i tried to scribble down a wish list from a Retail Store manager's perspective. The expectations are beginning to go beyond the traditional find inventory, find store and place order.

Continue reading "Multi Channel Commerce & Mobile Apps - Wishlist 2010" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In my previous Blog, I discussed about the Roadmap and the project kick-off, in this blog I would like to elaborate on what we actually crafted, “As a Solution for Plan Driven Procurement” and also the future functionalities fitment into the procurement landscape.

 

Continue reading "...SAP SRM 7.0 is here to stay, available to Leverage your SRM footprint: “The Implementation: What's the sandwich filling? ” – Part 4" »

Posted by Tridip Chakraborthy at 02:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I had the opportunity to attend a seminar on "How to Gain Competitive Advantage with End to End Supply Chain Visibility" sponsored collectively by Sterling, Deloite and GS1 held at Oxfordshire, UK sometime in November last year.

Deloite presented how important it was to maintain focus on business operations, with a clear emphasis on working capital optimization.
GS1 (They design and implement global supply chain standards) delved on the need of standard based solutions that enable organizations to gain visiblity of specific assets and how this in turn is driving process improvement throught the entire supply chain.

Continue reading "The Pit Stop - An Agile Supply Chain" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s the beginning of the year and our campus here at Bangalore is abuzz with client visits, with sometimes the Bangalore campus alone hosting 4-5 client visits in a single day. Budgets are being cast, everyone is looking for the right drop box to put their IT dollars and wait for maximum magic for the amount spent. While I am not involved in a majority of these visits, there's one industry vertical where SCM practice consistently gets invited to present their point of view, viz., Retail. My reasoning for this is that there’s really no other industry where one encounters so many best-of-breed SCM packages strung together by each of these retailers in a collage uniquely their own.

Continue reading "Decide where you integrate: MCO does not equal MCC!" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The way applications are resourced these days have a number of applications on a single virtualized bed of infrastructure be it private, public or hybrid deployment models. Application vendors are talking about multitenant models. Service providers are hosting tailored application platforms for their clientele.  The dynamics of hosting, appropriation of resources, and application customization is quiet different. In my previous blog here I urge on a stronger and proactive production environment. So what is necessary ingredient to bring that level of sophistication? The answer is the ‘profiling horizontal’. So how and why is it relevant to particularly SCM and generically packages. I take Sterling OMS as a case study to convey my view points.

 

Continue reading "Profiling Paradigm Shift in the Package World" »

Posted by Guruprasad B. Nagaraja at 04:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most interesting business discussions in any Available-To-Promise (ATP) project is that on Checking Horizon. This seemingly unassuming horizon, determines the timeline within which supplies are actually assessed against demands. The supply within the horizon is valuated as feasible, and thus a Sales Order within this horizon can be truly promised. A Sales Order outside of this horizon is deemed always feasible assuming that the supply chain can always react to the demand without any constraint.

 

Continue reading "Checking Horizon: The confluence of ATP and Planning" »

Posted by K. Srinivas at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, this blog of mine is different in many ways, from the ones that I have posted so far. I am not going to write too much to describe this topic but I am more interested in knowing what you all know. I want to reach out to each one of you to know what you have seen in industry either as an operations guy or as a consultant. Even if you have not seen it being practiced in real life, I am sure you would have some serious opinion on this matter.

The topic is very simple and well-intuitive. My question is: Have you seen “lean principles” being practiced in supply chain in any industry (preferably consumer goods/discrete manufacturing). I know the term “lean” has been used or mis-used very often, but I am open to hear anything from you – just take a pick, think and find out instances from your experience, that you can bucket under being “lean in supply chain”. Do not just restrict yourself to manufacturing...

Let me give you one example: recently, I had a discussion with a Supply Chain Head of a leading consumer goods organization and they intend to implement a “pull based” system in their supply chain.

Consumer goods companies have been pioneers in supply chain and their performance in supply chain has been best-in-class by any standards. Traditionally, we have seen organizations especially, consumer goods, running a typical push model where sophisticated forecasting is done to predict demand, goods are manufactured and distributed to various POS locations as per the dispatch plan. The product is actually pushed down in supply chain and focus is to improve forecast accuracy because that really drives everything else.

On the contrary, here is this company that would like to implement “pull system” and do away with forecasting to the maximum possible extent. To me, this is one true example of being lean in supply chain. I have always seen companies focusing on improving traditional push model that I described, but I have never seen a “pull model” running anywhere and hence this blog…

Going back to my question to all of you:

Do you think such practices exist in companies (esp. consumer goods)? I don’t know any company implementing a pull methodology in supply chain (please provide examples other than Toyota)? How do you marry push and pull in the supply chain, and where does it exist? Where is the Customer decoupling point? What tools do you use? How do you drive this initiative – what are the critical success factors?

Please share your experiences and insights – looking forward to hear from this great group of supply chain leaders…

Posted by Aatish Goel at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)