SupplyChainGuru

BACK TO BASICS : I was a new hire with an organization that clearly had inventory management issues starting with poor product identification, no location control and a poor control of the manual wall-to-wall physical count compounded with the lack of an electronic system of record. That was nearly 30 years ago . Below is an excerpt from a white paper by ECI SOFTWARE from March of 2019. Hard to believe the following was identified as Pit Fall #1.  "Inventory record inaccuracies: ... Surprisingly, many Small-Medium-sized Manufacturers (SMMs) do not have inventory record-keeping policies and processes in place, including regular inventory counts, maintenance, and documentation. Results from a recent ECi Software Solutions’ customer “Warehouse Management Woes” survey shows that 53% of small to mid-sized businesses conduct manual inventory counts at least once a quarter and 50% of respondents have challenges counting or reconciling inventory." You cannot hav

We've all heard about ZBB (Zero-based Budgeting) but here is an article from McKinsey relating specifically to the supply chain. Take-away Even if you don't take this approach completely, reading the article may make you think about the concept and applying the idea to specific areas in a way that will work FOR YOU and your organization. We can start with smaller actions that are easy to get moving rather than getting bogged down with trying to wrap everyone's mind around the big topic - and the resulting inaction/inactivity. Start small - fail small - learn fast. If you are taking small steps, and fail then the failure likely won't have any significant repercussions while offering the benefit of both moving and learning fast. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start moving quickly again with the benefit of new information/experience. Zero-based productivity: Going granular and end-to-end across the supply chain

I get a lot of emails every day with tons of content. My job is to surf these topics and find the pearls of wisdom worth writing about and sharing. Today, I fell upon this article courtesy of Supply Chain 24/7 . The material concepts are so relevant that at first I thought it had been published recently. Reading through, it turns out this was published over 20 years ago. To me, that means that we, as supply chain professionals, still have a ways to go in instilling these concepts into daily practice at the organizations where we work. You should be able to read the summary with no  problems but you may need an account to download the full article. Click the highlighted text below. The 7 Principles of Supply Chain Management Principle 1 : Segment customers based on the ser­vice needs of distinct groups and adapt the supply chain to serve these segments profitably. Principle 2 : Customize the logistics network to the service requirements and profitability of customer segme