Economists and economic theory can, more or less, explain only about 20 percent of the worldwide growth in per-capita income over the last 200-plus years. After economists account for factors such as labor, capital, natural resources, they ascribe the remaining growth to something referred to as “residual” growth.
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About Richard Cushing
7 Supply Chain Resolutions
Are you caught in the situation of being forced to rely on traditional forecast-driven MRP or DRP methods?
7 Things to Consider When Making Changes in Your Supply Chain?
1. We will create a system that senses demand and autonomously responds for delivering consistently high planned service levels. Sage Inventory Advisor (SIA) offers an autonomous response to changing conditions; however, its autonomous responses are limited to traditional, forecast-driven methods.
Advanced Planning and Scheduling Systems
Evaluating Advanced Planning and Scheduling Systems
Recently I was working with a supply chain client where the company was seeking to implement manufacturing systems that included an advanced planning and scheduling system (APS). I asked them: “What are your chief business goals in seeking to implement and use [specific ERP]’s Advanced Manufacturing capabilities in your business?”
Two of the crucial factors they mentioned in their response were to “gain insight into [their] business in regard to capacity… [and] ship dates.” The mentioned, specifically, challenges they were currently facing in “capacity planning” and the “scheduling of work orders.”
In light of this request and their business goals, I proceeded to ask them some important questions, such as:
Protecting Yourself and Contacts from Phishing Emails
It seems that dangerous phishing emails has become a regular to many inboxes.
What: a business contact and friend of mine had his business email account “cleverly hacked” (his words, whatever that means). As a result, I received a dangerous phishing email.
Questions to Consider When Selecting ERP Software
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Computers and software can make excellent allies in business and supply chain management. However, while certain progress is being made into the realm of artificial intelligence, for the present—at least—the computers we employ for most of our business functions (in ERP, MRP, MRP II, and similar) are not really thinking machines. They don’t think, at all. They compute, and that’s why they are called “computers.”
The following is a piece of correspondence I recently sent to a company who has engaged us to help them with automation around their manufacturing and supply chain. The focus of the letter was high-level information gathering. But, I want you to pay particular attention to the highlighted portions of the letter because end-to-end dependencies can be a stem weakness.
I would like to start with some high-level questions that, will help guide us toward the best possible outcomes for you—including a rapid return on your investments. If you are looking at multiple ERP solutions I suggest you do this for each solution, because they don’t all have the same features and functionality.
The Most Powerful Supply Chain Management System
Nearly 20 years ago, someone wisely observed:
The most powerful computer system is the one that gets used.
This comes to mind today in light of the current debate in the supply chain management world between the different schools of thought—much of the debate seeming focused on deriding the demand driven operating model (DDOM) or DDMRP (Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning).
The Focused Supply Chain
Who says you can’t win ’em all?
Most of the companies with which we work would really like to “win ’em all.” They’d like to have the lowest costs, the best sales, lowest operating expenses and highest profits in their league.
The problem is that no matter how much they try; no matter how many metrics and incentives they put in place; they just can’t seem to achieve the results they are after.
Better Inventory Management
So, a colleague of mine was asking some questions about how he might help his small-to-midsized business enterprise clients improve their supply chain and inventory management within Sage 100. Knowing that many of these small businesses have grown organically, and may lack a lot of formal training in inventory management theory, I offered the following in my response.
Let’s start with the basics: What does the client need to know about every SKU-Location (SKUL)?
Inventory Lead Time
Supply Chain Management Made Simple
This is HARD…
Having your supply chain management team make decisions about questions like the following is HARD if they are looking at screens like the one you see here.
- What to order?
- When to order it?
- In what quantities?
- With what priority?
Unlocking Your Supply Chain’s Full Potential
If your supply chain is not undergoing a transformation, you are falling behind. If you have not seriously reevaluated your strategic objectives and tactics within the last year in light of new methods and options now available to you, your supply chain is becoming a part of history—not the future. Read blog How to Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals for Supply Chain Improvements Projects.
Our job at RKL eSolutions is to help our customers create a durable competitive advantage by helping them discover those areas where old thoughtware is holding them back.
We recognize that, as outsiders, we will never know as much about your business and your industry as you and your management team probably do.
But our job is not to give you answers.
Our job is to ask the right questions in order to help you discover where old, outdated (perhaps, formerly) “right” thinking might be holding you back from transformations that can lead to significant—not incremental—improvements in your bottom-line.
We are confident that we can help you achieve big breakthroughs in a partnership that adds value to your enterprise through a combination of
- Provoking strategic thinking about things like positioning of inventory across your supply chain
- Introducing proven tactics for configuring your supply chain and monitoring its performance
- Designing sound business processes that help you hold onto your new-found advantages
- Training key personnel to support the new approach
- Applying effective technologies that will support your new strategies and tactics
You are not alone
Even many leading firms are still struggling to comprehend just where they stand in their own journey toward supply chain excellence. So, you are not alone in this.
Frequently we find that there is little or no alignment between the corporate strategies and supply chain tactics and execution. No wonder that significant and sustainable bottom-line improvements are almost impossible to achieve.
After all, an organization that is divided—at war with itself—is nearly always in a constant state of firefighting. It simply has not the time, energy or management attention needed to achieve breakthroughs.
We can help you and your team learn to work effectively as “a system,” and even extend that effectiveness up and down your supply chain by engaging with your trading partners.
Our demand-driven, outside-in helps introduce new thoughtware. This new thoughtware aids in identifying what needs to change from the major strategies down to the hands-on details.
How are you approaching supply chain transformation?
What are you doing to overcome the inertia of believing you are “right,” while new innovations may not be given consideration at all? Where have you found success? Where have been your biggest challenges?
Click below to get in touch with us here at RKL eSolutions if you have questions about new features or need help with Sage X3.
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