Author Archives: just2bruce

Conflicts That Cause Companies to Stockpile SKUs

Posted on October 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

I am posting this article mostly for my students.  It’s about inventory, folks!

Source: Conflicts That Cause Companies to Stockpile SKUs

How you group items makes a big difference in how you set service levels (fill rates or safety stock levels) in the face of variable demand.  When you have so many SKUs in stock, you have to group them or there’s too fragmented data to get good forecasts.  But how you do that grouping is important for the accuracy of forecasts and order quantities and timing.  And the researchers (graduate students, probably only a few years older than you) found that employees tended over time to misclassify SKUs in the groups, causing errors to creep in.

So the issue is the classic operations management or supply chain management dilemma. We know what to do.  Why aren’t we doing it?  At the end the subject is not about figuring the numbers, it’s about convincing people to do what they ought to.

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Posted in Leadership, Logistics, Production Operations, Supply Chains

2015 I-NUF Conference

Posted on October 25, 2015 | Leave a comment

I spent an enjoyable three days at this conference on Urban Freight held in Long Beach, CA.

Source: 2015 I-NUF Overview | METRANS Transportation Center

My colleague Dr Chris Clott (SUNY Maritime) and I presented a paper on supply chain integration at the Chicago freight bottleneck.  Our discussion offered a method of discovering main supply chain corridors to and from the area, discussed some of the attempts to reduce congestion in the light of supply chain integration, and concluded that ports such as LA/Long Beach or New York may need to consider implementing long range corridor integration rather than focusing on improvements inside their region boundaries.

We’ve included some Pareto charts exemplifying our search for important corridors linking Chicago. Truck traffic is super-dominant in terms of dollar value over every other mode.  So why isn’t supply chain integration in the Chicago mega region looking hard at alleviating truck congestion?

Pareto ToCHI Domestic Multi Pareto ToCHI Domestic Rail Pareto ToCHI Domestic Truck

 

 

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Posted in Logistics, Ports, Strategy, Supply Chains

The Rise of the Supply Chain Advocate

Posted on October 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

An interesting article about the need for supply chain advocates.  These folks help participants see how they fit into supply chains and how they can change operations to make things work better for everyone.

http://supplychainmit.com/2015/10/20/the-rise-of-the-supply-chain-advocate/

At the end though,  all the participants must feel satisfied that they are gaining from participation. This is a knotty allocation problem and admits no easy solution. For instance it is unlikely that any pricing system can fairly divide the costs or benefits.  

And if participants don’t play, the supply chain does not get the full benefit.  That dilutes the power of the integration, and costs more.  So there is a premium on keeping everyone on board.

The advocate can play a key role in keeping the coalition together.  She can make sure fact based information is shared and consistently present the reasons for sticking together.  It’s a negotiation process that goes on forever. The mediator can keep it going.

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Posted in Supply Chains

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