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Logistics and Supply Chain news, articles, tips and insights
Warehouse Excellence: The Seat of Customer Loyalty?
The warehouse, sometimes lying far from the customers it serves, may sound like an unlikely driver of customer loyalty, but in fact it has a huge impact on the customer experience. Companies that achieve warehouse excellence have a greater likelihood of securing...
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How to Provide High-quality Data for the Supply Chain Team
If you're in the IT game, and responsible for data in a manufacturing, sales, or logistics organisation, you're likely at some point to provide the supply chain team with data for network optimisation, supply chain modeling, or some similar project requiring...
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Supply Chain Spend Analysis: A Win-win For Procurement and Logistics?
When procurement and other supply chain-related business functions work closely together, your company's financial performance can only see improvement. More and more organizations are gaining awareness of this and are focused on closing the divide between procurement...
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An Introduction to Supply Chain Collaboration
If you're new to the supply chain arena, there will inevitably be terms and concepts with which you are not familiar. Some of them can be a little confusing too, until you put in some research effort to better understand them, since their names alone may not reveal...
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The Advantage of Warehouse Automation in the Sustainable Supply Chain
As a supply chain professional, it's likely that you think of warehouse automation in terms of reduced operating costs, quality and productivity improvements, waste elimination and manpower cuts. However, for the sustainable supply chain, automation can...
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Manufacturing in China: Still Viable in 2016?
Despite reports of a slowdown in the number of companies outsourcing manufacturing to Chinese factories, and the country's economic downturn, China remains a popular location for contract manufacturing. This is evidenced by the decision of at least two Western...
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Should the HR Team Care About MHE Selection in Supply Chain?
Whether you work for a manufacturer or brand owner with its own logistics operation or you are a manager for a 3PL provider, mechanical handling equipment is probably a critical element in your storage and transportation activities. When buying new...
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3 Sales and Operations Planning Traps to Avoid
Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is a simple enough process, yet it's one which many organisations struggle to implement and maintain successfully. To some extent this is perfectly understandable, since a successful S&OP process requires unfettered...
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Evaluating Logistics Outsourcing Proposals: Look Beyond the Scorecard
Some of my previous posts on this blog have provided tips for developing an RFP/RFT in order to select a logistics outsourcing partner. In this post, I want to focus a little on the next step: evaluating the logistics outsourcing proposals from your RFP...
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What Happens When Finance and Supply Chain Teams Collaborate?
Are you a finance manager or leader in a company with supply chain involvement? If so, how well do you understand the role of supply chain functions in your company? More importantly, do you know how well those functional teams understand their impact on company...
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An Introduction to CPFR in the Supply Chain
How much do you know about CPFR? If you’ve never heard of it, have a quick read through this post and you’ll understand the basics of CPFR in the supply chain profession. CPFR is the acronym for collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment, a practice...
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Marketing and Logistics Teams: Buddy-up For Promotional Profits
While marketing and logistics are both critical components of any commercial enterprise, at first glance they seem to have little direct relationship to one another. However, the two functions are inextricably linked and in fact, the actions of marketing directly...
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What Is Supply Chain Management and Why Does it Matter?
In an earlier post on this blog, I addressed the question “what is a supply chain?” As the post was intended to provide the answer in a nutshell, I simply explained that the supply chain starts with some raw materials and ends with a finished product in the hands of a...
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Why the Procurement Team Should Understand Inbound Freight Costs
If you work in a procurement or purchasing role, you’re probably involved in purchasing inbound materials. These might be raw materials for a manufacturing facility or perhaps finished goods (if you work for a retail organisation). In any event, you and your team can...
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6 Steps Your IT Department Can Take Towards RFID Readiness
Are you an IT guy or girl in a logistics or supply chain organisation? If so, radio frequency identification (RFID) might become a feature of your project activity in the future—that is if your company hasn’t already implemented RFID. The adoption of...
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