It’s appropriate that I’m reading Nucleus Research’s piece “Beyond Excel in Supply Chain Planning” on a Thursday.
I’m having a throwback Thursday moment as it was back in 2013 I made the case for Excel in a blog post titled, “Hey software bullies, stop picking on Excel.”
In my blog I observed that Excel was picking up the analytical gaps found in ERP systems. And as Seth Lippincott points out in the Nucleus Research piece, the flexibility and familiarity continue to drive the use of Excel.
We live in a world where social media presence is on a steep rise, skill validation and verification is reaching new heights, and building your own brand is critical.
To keep pace with the expectations of a credentialed workforce, Kinaxis is pleased to introduce digital badges to our certified base.
Knowledge, skills and abilities are the currency in the modern economy for interactions between organizations and their employees, partners and customers. To augment our existing certification program, Kinaxis will join the many technology giants that already use digital badges as a way of recognizing achievements.
In any given year, your company manages a variety of risks that threaten to jeopardize your supply chain operations.
In 2018, Lippert Components had acquired multiple businesses, and it was projected to continue growing in 2019. It was a stellar year for the company, but this growth also brought challenges. Lippert Components had to integrate its new acquisitions into its existing reporting practices.
At the same time, its global supply chain was facing new tariffs. Luckily, Lippert Components’ supply chain planners turned the company’s risks into opportunities…
With more than 200 applications for just 100 available seats, it would be an understatement to say that interest was strong in the 2019 Kinaxis Supply Chain Innovation Forum, held recently in Tokyo, Japan.
Kinaxis Japan invited Yoshinobu Ueno, Professor of Graduate School of Engineering, Kanazawa Institute of Technology and CEO of Valuegrid Institute Co., to present the forum’s keynote. Entitled “Understanding the Leadership Required of Management in Supply Chain Innovation Through Case Studies,” the talk covered management leadership and how it can help drive supply chain innovation.
Following this, Santen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., which recently introduced Kinaxis’ RapidResponse® platform into it’s operations, profiled a series of initiatives at the company that utilize RapidResponse to drive growth in overseas markets.
A transformation is taking place. Political landscapes shift overnight, global trade is constantly changing, consumers demand increasingly personalized service and smaller day-to-day challenges hit without warning. If your job is supply chain management, how on earth do you plan for the unplannable?
At Kinaxis, we devote our time to the innovative technologies, processes and methods that help our customers and partners navigate the changing landscape of supply chain planning. Forecasting specific disruptions has become increasingly futile, but if you set your business up to deal with the process of disruption you’ll be set up for success.
Today we’re releasing a new guide to help you in this process: Thinking Differently About Supply Chain Planning: The Case for Concurrency
I’ll admit it, I am a not a great golfer. Even though I can now drive the ball well, two years ago I could barely make contact. Like every golfer, my short game needs work and more often than not I’m happy to just get the ball on the green, never mind close to the pin.
If I actually manage to sink a putt there may or may not be some enthusiastic dancing on the green much to the embarrassment of the rest of my foursome. But the general trajectory of my game is one of improvement. The lesson I’ve learned is to study my performance and make adjustments to be a better golfer every time I go out.
There are some clear parallels between golf and supply chain improvement if you stop and think about them.
The concept of a drone was not something we gave much thought too just a few years ago—except for the applications of the military-related operations, much less drones in supply chains as product delivery mechanisms. But now, the day-to-day use of drones is a reality as they are being used for many purposes, from consumer recreational use to media, and from industrial to institutional applications.
For example, streaming companies are using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aka drones, to capture live events for sports, political rallies and concerts. Some governments use them to keep an eye on the wildlife in geographically remote areas, while some others utilize different variations of those devices for border patrol and other domains of law enforcement.
Imagine that three natural disasters hit your global supply chain within three years. For Keysight Technologies, this isn’t a hypothetical scenario. Between 2015 and 2016, earthquakes in Japan and explosions at a container storage station in China affected parts of the company’s supply chain. Then in 2017, the Tubbs wildfire burned down two structures at the company’s headquarters and damaged others.
What could have been a series of business fiascos was not. The company had continuity and disaster recovery plans in place, and supply chain employees routinely ran drills to prepare for potential issues.
