SCRC Articles Library: SCM Lessons Learned
SCM Lessons Learned Articles
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Demand Forecasting: A Cross Discipline Perspective Part II: Probabilistic and Ensemble Forecasting
In forecasting for demand there are two predominant methods of modeling available: deterministic and probabilistic. Normally just saying the names of these techniques is enough to turn someone off from…
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Demand Forecasting: A Cross Discipline Perspective Part I: Model Output Statistics (MOS)
This paper will highlight some of the numerical modeling techniques used in weather forecasting that can be applied to improve business forecasting. Demand and weather forecasting are comparable in so…
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Current Trends in Production Labor Sourcing: Conclusion
PART 1: Findings 1-3 PART 2: Findings 4-7 PART 3: Findings 8-10 PART 4: Conclusion PLS is a fast emerging trend in the management of semi-skilled production labor. It is…
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Current Trends in Production Labor Sourcing: Findings 8-10
PART 1: Findings 1-3 PART 2: Findings 4-7 PART 3: Findings 8-10 PART 4: Conclusion PLS is a fast emerging trend in the management of semi-skilled production labor. It is…
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Current Trends in Production Labor Sourcing: Findings 4-7
PART 1: Findings 1-3 PART 2: Findings 4-7 PART 3: Findings 8-10 PART 4: Conclusion PLS is a fast emerging trend in the management of semi-skilled production labor. It is…
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Current Trends in Production Labor Sourcing: Findings 1-3
PART 1: Findings 1-3 PART 2: Findings 4-7 PART 3: Findings 8-10 PART 4: Conclusion PLS is a fast emerging trend in the management of semi-skilled production labor. It is…
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Outsourcing Production Labor: A New Breed of Lean Manufacturing
The following report is introductory to Dr Handfield’s research on “ Current Trends in Production Labor Sourcing" Manufacturing companies are beginning to examine the business case for outsourcing production tasks…
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Best Practices in Procure to Pay Cycle: Reduce Complexity in Catalogs and Buying Channels - Part 8
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 PART 7 PART 8 PART 9 PART 10 Many of the experts also emphasized the need to reduce…
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Best Practices in Procure to Pay Cycle: Conclusions and Observations - Part 10
Virtually all of the hypotheses identified at the beginning of the research project were validated by the suppliers and subject matter experts interviewed in the study. A confluence of respondents…
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Best Practices in Procure to Pay Cycle: Secure Top Management Support - Part 9
Having a champion in senior management to send the signal that compliance to the redesigned P2P process is critical. Ideally, a policy of “zero tolerance” should be established, with consequences…
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Best Practices in Procure to Pay Cycle: On-Site Relationship Managers - Part 5
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 PART 7 PART 8 PART 9 PART 10 An important point that many respondents noted was the need…
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Best Practices in Procure to Pay Cycle: Develop a Robust Technology w/a Portal to Minimize Touch P6
A number of SME’s described the need to eliminate the manual intervention of multiple untrained individuals in entering information into systems such as SAP. Many ERP systems have modules for…
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Best Practices in Procure to Pay Cycle: Subject matter expert insights into the P2P process - Part 4
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 PART 7 PART 8 PART 9 PART 10 A number of senior executives from a variety of different…
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Best Practices in Procure to Pay Cycle: Perspectives from suppliers - Part 2
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 PART 7 PART 8 PART 9 PART 10 We first interviewed eight suppliers who were known to have…
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Strategic Purchasing: Supplier Relationship Performance Outcomes - Part 4
PART 1: Introducing New Research on Relational Rents PART 2: Strategic Purchasing and Supply Management Practices PART 3: The Nature of Strategic Purchasing PART 4: Supplier Relationship Performance Outcomes PART…
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Strategic Purchasing: The Nature of Strategic Purchasing - Part 3
PART 1: Introducing New Research on Relational Rents PART 2: Strategic Purchasing and Supply Management Practices PART 3: The Nature of Strategic Purchasing PART 4: Supplier Relationship Performance Outcomes PART…
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Strategic Purchasing: Strategic Purchasing and Supply Management Practices - Part 2
PART 1: Introducing New Research on Relational Rents PART 2: Strategic Purchasing and Supply Management Practices PART 3: The Nature of Strategic Purchasing PART 4: Supplier Relationship Performance Outcomes PART…
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Strategic Purchasing: Introducing New Research on Relational Rents - Part 1
PART 1: Introducing New Research on Relational Rents PART 2: Strategic Purchasing and Supply Management Practices PART 3: The Nature of Strategic Purchasing PART 4: Supplier Relationship Performance Outcomes PART…
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Digital Business Transformation [DBT): The Journey Must Begin Now - Part 2
True supply chain excellence will only come from making a digital business transformation [DBT]. It's a transformation that exploits all that technology has to offer, facilitates supply chain collaboration, and leads to new levels of operational excellence. More than a one-time project, the transformation is a journey, and the time to start that journey is now.
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Digital Business Transformation [DBT): the Journey Must Begin Now - Part 1
True supply chain excellence will only come from making a digital business transformation [DBT]. It's a transformation that exploits all that technology has to offer, facilitates supply chain collaboration, and leads to new levels of operational excellence. More than a one-time project, the transformation is a journey, and the time to start that journey is now.
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Lean Resource Centers
An important step in fostering lean learning in a company is to support continuous lean training. Employees must stay up to date with the latest aspects of lean. In order…
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Mastering Complexity and Seeking Simplicity in Your Information Supply Chain - Part 2
Like the old adage about not seeing the forest for the trees, companies must understand what is and what need not be complex in their data management processes. Modern Enterprise Resource Planning [ERP] Systems offer the opportunity to centralize data, provide information to the entire Integrated Supply Chain, and manage interactions with Supply Chain Partners. The challenge faced by many companies is to simply provide the needed information, without unnecessary data to distract the user
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Mastering Complexity and Seeking Simplicity in Your Information Supply Chain - Part 1
Consolidation of a company’s data in a single place is the most helpful action that a firm can take to extract maximum benefit from the data available. By creating a…
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Negotiations, Contracts and the Chinese Culture
As manufacturing operations are relocated to China, it is becoming imperative that executives understand how to negotiate and develop contracts in China. Business travelers must realize and accept cultural differences…
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Cultural Affects on the Global Supply Chain
As manufacturing operations are relocated around the world, the efficient movement of goods is becoming more and more important. Logistics providers are responsible for the movement of goods and face…
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Sarbanes-Oxley: How It Is Actually Affecting Businesses
With some time to evaluate the real cost of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, businesses are realizing the direct and indirect cost of this legislation to their businesses. They must comply with…
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Supply Chain Disruptions: Minimize the Effects
The Christmas Tsunami, in the Indian Ocean, gave the world another glimpse of supply chain disruption. Natural disasters, wars, and political upheavals occur regularly around the globe, playing havoc with…
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Benefits and Risks of Single Sourcing
For many companies, sourcing decisions can be some of the most strategic in the organization. Single sourcing has become increasingly practiced today. The decision to sole source an item, particularly…
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Supply Chain Disruptions
Weather causes many disruptions and disasters around the world. Hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and earthquakes cause large scale disasters where people need assistance. An efficient, planned supply chain is critical…
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Success in Diversity Supplier Programs
Many organizations are striving either to establish or to improve diversity supplier initiatives. These plans aim to increase corporate purchasing from companies that are at least 51% owned, operated, and…
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The Benefits of Going Vertical
Managers in many industries are discovering the advantages of going vertical in warehouse and production floor storage. Vertical Lift Modules (VLMs) can be used on production floors to store, locate…
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The Role of Purchasing in the New Product Development Process - Part II
As was discussed in Part I, it is important for organizations to integrate suppliers into the new product development (NPD) process (1). Because purchasing specialists are a key liaison between…
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The Role of Purchasing in the New Product Development Process - Part I
Market globalization and the rapid advancement of technologies require that companies differentiate themselves with innovative products and services to create competitive advantage. Increasingly, manufacturers face shortened product life cycles and…
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South Korea – Growing and Learning
With no lack of issues to deal with regarding the South Korean external business environment, planners at Daewoo and Hyundai have plenty to think about. For these companies, though, operating…
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Philips Electronics’ Balanced Scorecard
In the early 1990s, researchers Robert Kaplan and David Norton developed the “balanced scorecard (1).” Their concept was to expand the focus of managers to a more diverse set of…
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Why Does GKN Run Lean?
GKN Driveline North America’s (GKN DNA) primary customers are automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEM). An automotive OEM requires its suppliers to ship the right materials, in the right quantity, to…
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Evaluated Receipt Settlement – Making Progress?
Supply Management at Progress Energy is seeking to increase the efficacy of an Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS) process. Vendor relationship management is a key part of this effort. This point…
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Deere’s Product Delivery Process
Supply Management at Deere & Company enables the effective delivery of world-class products and support systems to worldwide markets via its contribution to the company’s Enterprise Product Delivery Process (EPDP).…
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Cash to Cash: Toyota, Inventory Management and Heijunka
Both Accounting and Supply Chain professionals rely on Cash to Cash (C2C) measures to make processes more efficient and cost-effective. C2C is generally the number of days it takes to…
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Success with Hub and Spoke Distribution
Federal Express, UPS, Norfolk Southern and Yellow Freight have all successfully implemented hub and spoke distribution to achieve a competitive logistics advantage (1). They have found that this method of…
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From Push to Pull – Perfecting the Means
What is “hybrid mode” supply management? A recent SupplyChainBrain.com article that covered a study by AMR Research describes it as a mixed manufacturing mode that lies somewhere between a make-to-stock…
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The Road to Lean Manufacturing
Lean Manufacturing, an approach to manufacturing made famous by Toyota, has been hailed as the next great thing by consultants and practitioners. Fads, like reengineering and ERP solutions, have come…
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A TaylorMade Supply Chain
Putting a high-tech golf club in the hands of a high-handicap golfer will not necessarily produce a world class golfer. Similarly, simply adding technology to a poorly designed supply chain…
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Procurement Technology and Trust
For the average company, purchased products and services account for more than 60% of their total costs (1). That makes procurement a likely candidate for cost reduction efforts. Procurement technology…
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The IT Strategic Sourcing Four-Step
“An overwhelming majority of CIOs say their enterprises cannot handle their IT services alone and are willing to create partnerships with service providers. But few CIOs have strategies to work…
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Estimating the Costs of Iraq’s Reconstruction
Now that the war is over, what will it cost to rebuild the war-torn nation? Analysts have differing estimates for the cost. While the United Nations Development Program estimates the…
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Taming the Bullwhip Effect
What is the bullwhip effect The bullwhip effect can be described as a series of events that leads to supplier demand variability up the supply chain. Trigger events include the…
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Global Sourcing: Levels and risks
Global sourcing is an issue that executive management needs to be cognizant of these days because the repercussions of ignoring global sourcing could be devastating to the future health of…
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Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI): Three Steps in Making It Work
The goal of Vendor Managed Inventory is to provide a mutually beneficial relationship where both sides will be able to more smoothly and accurately control the availability and flow of…
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Internal benchmarking: Looking in the Mirror
According to www.dictionary.com, benchmarking is “to measure (a rival’s product) according to specified standards in order to compare it with and improve one’s own product.” Benchmarking is typically thought of…
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Implementing Best Practices
Best Practice: an overused cliché meaning something that everyone wants to use, but no one knows how to define. Many people start the New Year with a resolution, “a course…
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Finding a Place for Logistics Management
What are 3PLs and 4PLs? Why are companies outsourcing logistics management to them? The acronyms for Third Party Logistics (3PL) and Fourth Party Logistics (4PL) are commonly used to describe…
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E-Commerce vs. E-Business
“There will be nothing in the 10-year window except e-companies. That does not mean that Brick-and-Mortar will go away. But Click-and-Mortar will become the only means of survival.” John Chambers,…
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Six Steps to a Successful VMI System
COMMUNICATE expectations of all parties. Customer must commit to sharing PRECISE information. Supplier must ensure RELIABLE transmission, receipt, and use of information. Sufficiently TEST systems before going live. Expect implementation…
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Lessons in Demand Management
Demand Management: The function of recognizing all demands for goods and services to support the market place. It involves prioritizing demand when supply is lacking. Proper demand management facilitates the…
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Perils of Reverse Auctions
The reverse auction — where interested parties bid a price down from an amount set by the buyers — is increasingly drawing attention as a tool to drive down procurement…
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Six Best Practices in Cost Management
In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, managing spend is an important step to realizing your profit objectives. And more than ever, companies are relying on procurement and supply management functions…
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