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4 Key Measures and Tips to Improve your Supply Chain Planning
Knowing where you stand is the first step to finding ways to improve your organization’s supply chain planning processes. And once you understand your baseline, benchmarking enables you to identify gaps, find successful practices that drive higher performance, and then establish realistic goals…
New Year’s Supply Chain Resolution: Lower Supply Chain Planning Costs
As organizations look back on the past year’s successes and failures, too many operational leaders were saying “humbug” about how much money their companies shelled out this year on supply chain planning. How can you tell if you’re spending too much on this mission-critical function? Start by…
Looking Forward to 2018 in Finance and Supply Chain
New year, new priorities? Where will your organization be focusing your efforts in 2018? As you get ready to tackle this new year, APQC's research team wants to ensure we understand what your top priorities and challenges are for 2018. We want the research we conduct and the content we create to…
Toy Story Telling From CSCMP
Recently I attended my first CSCMP conference, which was in Atlanta Georgia this year. It was a great event, I had virtually no expectations walking in and I was pleasantly surprised. First, it was much larger than I anticipated. I walked in to the large convention center Sunday night for what I…
5 Tips for Better Demand Planning
If you were on social media in 2013, you probably saw one viral video that was hard to miss: A Volvo Live Test featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme performing an “epic split” between two rolling Volvo trucks. It was the sixth and final in Volvo’s series of Live Test films, which pushed the…
Recent Hurricanes Highlight Supply Chain’s Struggle With Truck Driver Shortage
“What’s the biggest supply chain challenge facing you right now?” I’ve gotten some interesting answers to that question, but last week while at the APICS conference in San Antonio, I was chatting with a supply chain leader from Sysco who lives in Houston. Her response to my question gave me…
Millennial Workers Value Relationships
As I was pulling together content recently around millennials in the workforce, I realized my daughter is the youngest of the millennial range – born in 1995. Millennials, according to APQC’s study definition, are born 1980 – 1995. Why not ask her a few questions to see if her thoughts correlate…
What is Blockchain?
Much is being said these days about blockchain, also referred to as distributed ledger technology, and its impact on business. Let’s be honest with each other: are you familiar with blockchain? If you are not, then the good news is that you are not alone. And if you are extremely familiar, you are…
Digitizing the Supply Chain
Digitizing the supply chain is continuing to unfold. In the past week, I’ve spoken to a few organizations about their progress to create the digital supply chain – running the gamut from getting it started in earnest, to full on using it. One thing was clear – no plans are in place to change…
Why Connected Devices Are Going to Power Supply Chain’s Future
Within this decade, no organizational function will experience greater transformation from the Internet-of-Things than supply chain management. The digital transformation is allowing all parts of the business to collect data that will drive decisions and operations. But the supply chain is the…