^The APQC Blog

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!

The end of the year can mean many things for employees and their managers: a few days off for the holidays, a little down time to clean out files and inboxes, or a great time to start planning ahead for the New Year. At many companies, it is also the time when managers call employees into their offices for their long-awaited, and sometimes dreaded, annual performance reviews. 

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.

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 worry for many employers, given the high cost of turnover and training.

It’s almost 2017. The accounts payable (AP) manager has an abundance of technology innovations from which to choose to make the process run faster, better, and cheaper. For example, there are workflow automation solutions that help to reduce duplicate payments, late payments, strengthen internal controls, and support audit efficiency.

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 better understand how it will change.

In my not so recent past, I was a divorced single mother, working full-time, and going part-time to a local state university for my Ph.D. That was hard. The word that I used for my life during those days was satisficing – It generally means you do the minimum on all fronts to get by.

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 significantly cheaper than flying cargo and there is more flexibility regarding shipping regulations for organizations.  More than ever before, organizations realize that sea freight is indispensable to the U.S. economy and ports connect American manufacturers to the global marketplace.

As those of you who follow me on Twitter—@MSIMS_APQC—might know, I recently attended the Predictive Analytics World for Business

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.