Dec 1, 2016 was my first day at APQC. Folks all day asked if I was drinking from a firehose yet. Indubitably I was. Actually, I moaned, it was more like having a large bucket of ice water poured over me.  You know what’s coming, but not exactly sure when. Hey, my eyes were closed! Setting…

There are lots of do’s and don’ts in the supply chain world and as a brand new member of the supply chain management team here at APQC, I thought that I would give a few examples of what NOT to do. Don’t be a dunce by doing it by yourself. Chances are someone has run into a similar problem to…

The days of staying at a company until retirement is now a foreign concept to many people—most of all, millennials. We know that millennials are more likely than any previous generation to switch jobs and that six in 10 millennials are open to new job opportunities. This is a great cause of…

There is a lot of disruption headed your way!  Big data. Robotics. Analytics. Drones. 3D Printing. Collaboration with a purpose. IoT. And the list grows daily. This we know - the supply chain will change. But how is a harder question to answer.  However, two groups are working to…

Many of us never consider where the items we purchase everyday come from and the journey those items make to get to us. Everyday shipments of everything from petroleum and consumer goods to steel and automobiles come through U.S. ports from all over the world. Shipping goods by sea tends to be…

As you may have heard from us a few times, benchmarking is a top tool used by leadership teams to support decision making. So, to dig into that topic, APQC surveyed over 300 professionals—across functional boundaries—to understand their common benchmarking practices and the value derived from…

APQC has a new supply chain management research principal lead, Joe Tillman, and I had the pleasure of recently speaking with him. In his new role, Joe will be the voice for supply chain research, benchmarking, and process improvement. Joe has a keen interest in all things supply chain and uses…

Supply Chain Managers are often faced with several issues that they must deal with to ensure a healthy supply chain and minimize the number of fires that arise and the number that have to be put out. Yesterday, September 9th was Fire Prevention Day. In honor of this special day, I would like to…

Amazon.  The Behemoth of Booksellers.  The Disruptor of Retail.   The Patron Saint of the US Postal Service (their Prime saved USPS’s bacon). Amazon. The Paragon of Predictive Analytics.  The Role Model of Recommendation Systems. Given Amazon’s obsession with data and…

As many of you know by now, I’m the proud parent of a high school student, with all the joys and frustrations that entails. I was recently struck with how much being a parent is like managing a business. Think about it. There are: performance measures to monitor—grades and standardized…