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Carbon Footprint Planning Capabilities Across the Supply Chain
By KinaxisCarbon is challenging business in many ways and customers, investors and other stakeholders are paying very close attention to how the challenge is met. Those that react well to the challenge will be seen as innovators and will be rewarded; others will fall behind and risk becoming an afterthought or worse.
This paper provides a brief exploration of the current carbon landscape and will outline the attributes of an ideal set of supply chain carbon management tools.
Five Ways Your Procurement Could Be Leaving Money On The Table
By KinaxisEnterprises that provide their strategic procurement teams with proper tools can expect them to deliver year-over-year cost savings, close to 10 times their expenses.
This white paper
- lists five key pieces of intelligence that enable more effective supply management and procurement planning
- describes a real-life negotiation in which superior supply chain visibility and collaboration helped minimize a dramatic price hike attempted by a supplier
- presents a recent analyst's report that confirms the value of strategic procurement, and describes several key characteristics of the top-performing teams… especially how they exploit technology to gather this strategic intelligence and avoid leaving money on the table.
As companies outsource their manufacturing operations, they increase the number of tiers in the supply chain, greatly reducing their supply chain visibility and making them dependent on remote suppliers for operations performance results. To be truly effective, supplier collaboration needs to go far beyond the tactical exchange of data. Key suppliers must be brought into the decision-making process, so that brand owners can exchange early warnings and help resolve supply chain risk issues.
This paper discusses the value of a closer and more collaborative relationship with key suppliers and what is required to make that happen.
What is needed in today's dispersed and loosely coupled supply chains are more collaboration, and less control; more coordination, and less optimization. Companies must have the ability to enable their front-line people to use their judgment to make fact based decisions which address the surprise and compromise inherent in today's global and multi-tier supply chains. At the heart of delivering these capabilities is the technical architecture of the supply chain solutions.
This paper describes the integrated set of capabilities that is required to satisfy the business needs of the 21st century supply chain.
Regardless of the markets served, most producers have a common need: to respond and adapt to changes in the marketplace faster than their competition does. By adopting Lean order management and fulfillment processes, a business gains superior operations performance and flexibility; thus increasing their competitive edge.
Since actual manufacturing and material lead-times are typically a small portion of total cycle time, reducing non-production administrative processes that have long cycle times can provide the most immediate impact.
The ferocity of the recession simply served to exacerbate and accelerate the underlying challenge of managing volatility. Traditional supply chain planning approaches were never designed to accommodate the degree of volatility companies are facing today. This paper highlights four steps companies should take to help them embrace the chaos and create supply chain strategies for the long-term:
- Get your data
- Establish a robust sense-and-respond surveillance system
- Empower people to collaborate
- Merge supply chain planning and execution
With these fundamental building blocks in place, a new and compelling best-practice bar will be established for S&OP, supplier collaboration, order promising, inventory management, and many more key supply chain processes.
Demand Planning: How to reduce the risk and impact of inaccurate demand forecasts
By KinaxisAs a general rule, forecasts are always inaccurate. This paper discusses two approaches which can be used to reduce the risk and impact of inaccurate demand forecasts:
- Collaboration between customers and suppliers to improve the accuracy of the forecast.
- Quicker response to demand changes to reduce the cost of forecast error.
By improving your demand planning and demand management processes, your organization can improve customer service (by being more responsive) as well as operations performance (by achieving inventory reductions).
How CIOs Can Improve Supply Chain Management, Even with a Tight IT Budget
By KinaxisRight now is an ideal time for CIOs to make careful investments in key areas that wring better business results from smaller IT budgets. Given the limitations of software now being used for sales and operations planning—spreadsheets, ERP, and legacy planning—this paper looks at one way CIOs can roll out significantly more powerful supply chain management functions at an affordable cost by extending existing systems with specialized software delivered as a service (SaaS).
Inventory Rationalization and Right Sizing Strategies
By KinaxisWith the global recession in full swing, most companies in the commercial space are scrambling to avoid further degradation of their companies' value by delivering profitable business performance despite significantly lower sales volumes. For many companies this battle has already been lost and the subject is more one of survival, as is the case for the American auto industry. When examining the crucial factors that are influencing operations performance during these tough economic times, inventory exposure is a topic raised frequently.
Achieving Better Service and Profitability with More Advanced Forms of S&OP
By ARC Advisory GroupThe desire to improve service is the top driver for many companies' investments in information technology (IT). Achieving this goal would be very difficult without a robust Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process. The goal of sales and operations planning is to achieve high service levels by effectively balancing demand with supply. This requires both internal and external collaboration. Internally, at a minimum, the manufacturing, demand planning, and sales and marketing groups must collaborate effectively. S&OP, however, is evolving to provide better support for external collaboration, better integration with longer term business planning, and better simulation capabilities to support both contingency and ad hoc planning.
Beyond the Supply Chain Plan: Nine Key Questions for Identifying Critical Gaps
By Ventana ResearhClearly the global economy is experiencing a resurgence in volatility. Businesses worldwide have been affected by turbulence in the prices of commodities and products, currency exchange rates and consequently demand and supply. These events have made it more difficult for businesses to plan accurately for any period; virtually every plan is more fragile today. Volatility also has increased the risk of being unable to adapt quickly and in ways that best meet a company's objectives.
This white paper is intended to give Supply Chain Managers the inside track on how to modernize your supply chain to meet the challenges of the 21st century. In particular, it presents five powerful "secrets" that can help you move on from the linear tactics of the past, and take concrete steps toward a more dynamic future.
Why You Need to Re-evaluate Your Approach to Supply Chain Planning
By Kinaxis™At the core of legacy supply chain planning solutions is the concept that they own and control all the data. This is simply not true when a supply chain may consist of three or more tiers, each with their own Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. No longer is it an issue of integration between modules, but of integration between companies each having their own ERP systems and other data sources. The goal is not optimization of assets, but of effective coordination between trading partners. A new supply chain planning paradigm is required.
Structuring the Outsourced Supply Chain Data Model: 10 Critical Data Issues to Consider
By Kinaxis™Brand owners are quick to discover that the first critical impact of outsourcing is the loss of visibility of detailed supply – demand data that they once held in their own ERP systems. Without this visibility they cannot make information-based supply management decisions. While getting access to detailed supplier supply – demand data is usually their first focus, it soon becomes apparent that tools that can allow them to view, analyze, and manipulate this data are also a very high priority. Achieving this level of supply chain visibility and coordination is no easy feat.
Essential Characteristics of a Supply Chain Risk Management Strategy
By Kinaxis™Since the early part of this decade, supply chain risk management has become increasingly more recognized as a critical part of corporate strategy. The move to leaner, global supply chains and events such as severe weather and financial instability have highlighted the risk of disrupted supply. Traditional approaches to supply chain risk management have focused on risk assessment and mitigation; but there is another side. Despite the best planning and preparation, not all events can be anticipated. When unplanned events occur, a company must be prepared to respond quickly and effectively or risk suffering financial and customer service losses. Read this whitepaper to learn more about the capabilities required to support the two sides of supply chain risk management – mitigation and response.
The continued downward pressure on IT budgets combined with the shifting dynamics of today's supply chains has created an environment ideally suited to be addressed by on-demand service offerings. With the right capabilities, on-demand solutions for supply chain management can offer a unique combination of tangible benefits to IT (costs savings and low IT resource requirements) as well as to the business (sophisticated computing solutions designed to excel within today's global and collaborative supply chains).
Four Capabilities Required for 21st Century Sales and Operations Planning
By Kinaxis™Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a process defined as long as 30 years ago. Much has changed in the structure and manner in which business is conducted since then. In addition, technology used to plan and operate a business has matured from very rudimentary MRP systems focused on manufacturing in a single site, into web based solutions for multi-tier collaboration between organizations. However, the S&OP process used by many manufacturers reflect the history of S&OP rather than the reality of today...
Enabling Sales and Operations Planning with RapidResponse
By KinaxisSales and Operations Planning organizations that leverage demand-supply planning, monitoring, and collaborative response solutions are finding themselves better equipped to power a world class S&OP process. Key capabilities include; scenario management, expressing the results of scenarios as financial measures, early alerting to consequences of decisions made elsewhere in the supply chain, and focusing users on the exceptions that require their attention.
For today's manufacturers volatility and poor visibility contribute to demand and supply imbalances on a daily basis. The challenge is in finding the formula for rapid and intelligent responses to constant, unexpected exceptions. Learn how, by investing in a Response Management solution, two global companies were able to improve forecast effectiveness and volatility management, increase visibility, and still meet customer demand.
Leveraging Response Management in a Super-Charged Environment
By KinaxisResearch In Motion (RIM) Limited, maker of the BlackBerry®, is a Canadian company experiencing massive growth in volume output, staffing, and manufacturing infrastructure. The combined pressures of a rapidly expanding customer base and shortened product lifecycles have led the company to add more contract manufacturers to the supply chain, which means that more complex decisions need to be made in less time. Existing software was not up to the challenge, so the implementation of a new decision support tool was essential to keep RIM positioned as a market leader.
Achieving Supply Chain Visibility: There is More than Meets the Eye
By KinaxisConsistently, industry research cites that one of the most important challenges facing supply chain professionals today is supply chain visibility. This could not be more true for industries such as hi-tech electronics and consumer goods, where brand owners and contract manufacturers are challenged by an environment of distributed operations, high demand volatility, and rapid product evolution –all of which make the issue of visibility all that more pressing and yet at the same time, all the more difficult to achieve.
Charting a New Course
By Charlie Barnhart, Technology ForecastersThe macro trends of the electronics industry are clear; lower prices, higher performance, mass customization and shorter life-cycles. All of which drives companies to outsource more activities, more often, to more regionally remote geographies than ever before. Doesn't matter if it's a consumer or a commercial product, large volume or small, a significant percentage of global outsourcing is being serviced from China today and will be from some even lower-cost region (India?) tomorrow. But does moving manufacturing to these low cost labor regions automatically mean a lower total cost of ownership?
The trend is clear—OEMs continue to outsource more functions, more often, to more geographically remote locations than ever before. While adding inventory to the supply chain may look like a quick-fix to the challenges created by remote supply solutions, it is not. In practice, it tends to make companies less responsive to market dynamics—not more. Read this paper to find out what other options exist.
Surviving and Thriving in the Global Market
By Ann Grackin, Chainlink ResearchTrue market leaders see change as a constant, and build a core competency in effectively responding to change into their value chain and technology enablers. This paper explores supply chain practices, making the case for a higher level approach—effective rapid response—as a key performance strategy for business, and what it takes to be a supply chain leader.
Brand owners today are continually faced with the growing pressures that result from constant demand changes. A strategic capacity to respond has quickly become an imperative for effectively managing demand volatility. Download our complimentary whitepaper and learn how you can enable a demand-driven supply chain.
Coordinating Outsourced Manufacturing: A Win-Win Proposition for OEMs and CMs
By KinaxisManaging the demands of constant change is one of the biggest challenges facing the electronics industry today. As the relationship between brand owners and CMs evolve, the need for flexible tools and methodologies to help them effectively manage change within the supply chain becomes critical. Case Study: Lucent (now Alcatel-Lucent).
Teradyne/Solectron (now Flextronics): Overcoming Challenges in OEM/CM Relationships
By KinaxisSuccess for today's manufacturers depends on the ability to respond quickly to constantly changing customer demands while keeping costs low and efficiency high. Effectively managing the "demand-driven supply chain" is highly challenging in today's increasingly outsourced and complex environment.
Rapid Response to Change Drives Breakthroughs in Operations Performance
By KinaxisCompanies spend vast amounts of time and money upgrading processes, enhancing quality, improving forecasting and planning systems, and implementing similar supply chain initiatives. Valuable as these ERP and SCP systems are, they aren't designed to resolve one of the most crucial needs manufacturers face when their business doesn't run like clockwork, the ability to reduce last-minute surprises by quickly responding to daily changes.
A Roapmap to Lean Success: Software Requirements for Reaping the Rewards of Lean
By KinaxisLean manufacturing is based on the concept that production can be driven by real customer demand. Instead of producing what you hope to sell, lean manufacturing produces what your customer wants with much shorter lead times. In order to be successful, a company must adopt this philosophy and then use the tools available to apply the philosophy.
