Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends in Purchasing. We absolutely could not run our businesses without them.

Americans pride themselves on their ‘Yankee ingenuity”, the ability to ‘get ‘er done’, and the McGiver skills to save the world, or at least ourselves, with a paper clip, a BIC lighter and s

Here are the 3V’s for better business results:
- Visibility
- Velocity
- Variability

Let's look at the impact of error on the supply chain. I'm going to organize my thoughts around two key points --


1. An organization must be relentless in its rigor for removing error from the transaction systems, especially the order-to-cash workstream.

Collaboration is an overused word. No one argues that collecting information from diverse sources is important, but collaboration is more than just gathering data from different people. For example, gathering forecasts from management, sales persons, and customers is useful, only if there is a well thought out process to reconcile the different inputs. All too often, efforts to create a collaborative process end with data gathering.

Data collection systems work. However, they mean an investment in technology. Before we can justify that investment, we need to understand why we may want to utilize a data collection system in place of people with clipboards.

Stay tuned for my perspective on a method for analyzing errors in the order-to-cash workstream and their impact on planning. More to the point, a rapid method for detecting, minimizing the impact, and

Cost containment seems to be the overriding trend in food manufacturing, according to a panel discussion at the Food Automation and Manufacturing conference in Florida. This has led to a greater emphasis on performance measurement and more widely to consolidation through mergers and acquisitions. Faced with a similar situation, the chemical industry in the mid 80's and 90's responded by using technology to streamline their supply chain planning and extract value from their supply chains.

Supply Chain Planning is neither a software issue, nor is it a business process issue - Successful implementations are the result of an intelligent blend of domain knowledge, technology, and up-to-date software.

SAP has been advertising that companies that use SAP have 32% higher profitability than the companies that don’t.