Emerging Issues in Supply Chain

Apr 9, 2015

Duke Energy CEO Talks About Leadership

Lynn Good, Duke Energy’s CEO, spoke at NC State this week, and shared her many thoughts on leadership and transformation.  Her vision for what is otherwise often considered a stable and… 

Apr 1, 2015

Supply Chain Metrics: Make Sure They Are Aligned with Your Strategy!

Many people are talking about Key Performance Indicators, Metrics, Analytics, and other indicators of performance.  The importance of selecting the right metrics or “measures” as I prefer to call them,… 

Mar 13, 2015

Q: Food vs Fuel? A: Wrong question…We need more efficient markets!

I have been working with Jay Golden at Duke University on the biobased forecasting project for the USDA, seeking to understand the current scope of the biobased product market (… 

Feb 26, 2015

Omni-Channel Supply Chains Are Changing Everything You Ever Learned in School…

A senior executive from a large global manufacturer came to speak in my MBA class this week, and discussed the major shifts in global business that was occurring due to… 

Feb 10, 2015

Spend Analytics in the Federal Acquisition Sector

Acquisition in the federal government has been identified as a major source of potential savings in the future, as in the private sector, but a recent set of workshops and… 

Feb 9, 2015

Post Award Contract Management: Soft Skills Differentiate Success

I recently spoke with an oil and gas executive, who shared with me his thoughts on post-award contract management.  He noted that “Demand management and specification management are some of… 

Jan 14, 2015

What is the return on ERP implementation? Results from our research

As organizations seek to drive supply chain integration across global business units and markets, billions of dollars have been invested in massive systems known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. ERP… 

Jan 13, 2015

What's New in 2015 for the supply chain world? See 2014's predictions..

Last year around this time I made a lot of predictions about what 2014 would hold in store…Let’s revisit some of these, and see what has happened (or what hasn’t!)… 

Oct 24, 2014

Global Luxury Management "Lifestyle" brands require push supply chain design customization

More and more global luxury brands such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and others are promoting themselves as Lifestyle brands, spanning many products including fragrance, home collections, apparel, paint, wallpaper, foods, and… 

Oct 8, 2014

USDA releases study on Biobased Economy

The USDA released a new study that I worked on with Jay Golden from Duke University this past summer.  We spent a good deal of time collecting research from a…