In every facet of our life, technology is present. So it should come as no surprise that technology is present in the fulfillment industry and is playing a massive part.
Something as staid as the warehouse has been streamlined and revolutionised as a result of technology making it more proficient and organised. Warehouses must be far more efficient because online shopping has made the fulfillment industry more relevant. A company such as Amazon ships millions of dollars’ worth of merchandise every day, which would never have happened before the internet age. (more…)
Procurement transformation is an important new focus area for supply chain-driven companies, in which efforts are afoot to concentrate and realign resources on procurement process excellence.
Many of today’s more advanced sourcing solutions can help you drive five critical procurement transformation initiatives. (more…)
There is a pressing need for purchasing teams that can understand and respond to the specific challenges facing chief technology officers in both mid-size and large corporates. (more…)
Data quality is a crucial driver of ‘omnichannel’ strategy success – where customers can use whichever sales channels, such as in store and online, they choose – and nowhere is this more important than in retail.
Retailers must share data across a network of trading partners in order to create a single version of supply chain ‘truth’ and many are now investing in new technology to gain visibility, manage data growth and collaborate across their network. Equipped correctly, retailers can integrate all systems and provide a useful analysis of the data that flows through them, allowing them to make intelligent supply chain decisions across all channels. (more…)
In the youth of the automotive industry, vertical integration was the order of the day. Henry Ford and the like smelted their own iron, poured their own castings and may have even tapped their own rubber trees. The modern concept of a ‘supplier base’ did not exist.
Today the marque owner is an assembler rather than a manufacturer. With the exception of power train and bodyshell everything is bought in. As a result, the supply base is ‘tiered’ – tier one suppliers delivering ready to fit systems or assemblies, themselves receiving sub-assemblies from tier twos, who in turn are supplied by ever more remote ranks of component suppliers. The assembler has a close relationship with its first-tier suppliers; may have a relationship with the second tier; and as for the component suppliers, they are “a far away country of which we know little”. (more…)
E-procurement initiatives are about achieving reach, speed and control in requisitioning and approval processes, but those three things cannot be achieved with manual processes. The key objective is to erase inefficiencies from processes so it is easier and faster for everyone involved to do what you want them to do. (more…)
This month has seen the launch of one of the best sustainable supply chain initiatives I have ever been involved in. For the past two years we have been working quietly behind the scenes to develop the ‘Supply Chain Sustainability School’ which was launched this week and covered in Supply Management online the same day. (more…)
We are living in times of a growing amount of digital data. Economist writer Ludvig Siegele claims 2012 will be the year in which the trend of ‘big data’ gets noticed more widely. “Many more firms will start to analyse huge piles of data to optimise everything from their supply chains to their customer relationship,” he wrote. (more…)
As supply chain management has become dependent on electronic systems it has simultaneously grown more vulnerable to attacks from external (or internal) sources. (more…)
So far we have looked at the strategies you could use to drive value in both office supplies and IT consumables. This week we are considering the challenge presented by IT hardware.
Galloping technology innovation and an ever-increasing circle of CAPEX and OPEX purchasing choices have changed the IT hardware sourcing landscape. Once relatively simple, it’s a category now crammed with more components parts than the average circuit board. (more…)
In every facet of our life, technology is present. So it should come as no surprise that technology is present in the fulfillment industry and is playing a massive part.![[Bloglines]](http://blog.supplymanagement.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
![[del.icio.us]](http://blog.supplymanagement.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://blog.supplymanagement.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://blog.supplymanagement.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Google]](http://blog.supplymanagement.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://blog.supplymanagement.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[Twitter]](http://blog.supplymanagement.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
