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The ferocity of the recession simply served to exacerbate and accelerate the underlying challenge of managing volatility. Traditional supply chain planning approaches were never designed to accommodate the degree of volatility companies are facing today. This paper highlights four steps companies should take to help them embrace the chaos and create supply chain strategies for the long-term:
- Get your data
- Establish a robust sense-and-respond surveillance system
- Empower people to collaborate
- Merge supply chain planning and execution
With these fundamental building blocks in place, a new and compelling best-practice bar will be established for S&OP, supplier collaboration, order promising, inventory management, and many more key supply chain processes.
Demand Planning: How to Reduce the Risk and Impact of Inaccurate Demand Forecasts
By KinaxisAs a general rule, forecasts are always inaccurate. This paper discusses two approaches which can be used to reduce the risk and impact of inaccurate demand forecasts:
- Collaboration between customers and suppliers to improve the accuracy of the forecast.
- Quicker response to demand changes to reduce the cost of forecast error.
By improving your demand planning and demand management processes, your organization can improve customer service (by being more responsive) as well as operations performance (by achieving inventory reductions).
Download the whitepaper to learn more.
How CIOs Can Improve Supply Chain Management, Even with a Tight IT Budget
By KinaxisNearly all CIOs today are under pressure to contain costs, yet many enterprises need better systems, not cutbacks. How can you do both?
Right now is an ideal time for CIOs to make careful investments in key areas that wring better business results from smaller IT budgets. Given the limitations of software now being used for sales and operations planning —spreadsheets, ERP, and legacy planning— this paper looks at one way CIOs can roll out significantly more powerful supply chain management functions at an affordable cost by extending existing systems with specialized software delivered as a service (SaaS).
Download the whitepaper to learn more.
Inventory Management: Inventory Rationalization and Right Sizing Strategies
By KinaxisWhen examining the crucial factors that are influencing operations performance during these tough economic times, inventory exposure is a topic raised frequently.
Appropriately rationalizing your company’s inventory management strategies is of vital importance to business performance. Too much inventory, or inventory which is poorly positioned, can result in impacts on cost and cash flow that can be potentially fatal in the current business climate. The goal of an appropriate inventory strategy is to ensure that you can maximize your opportunities in the market place with as little inventory as possible. This takes a clear understanding of the various factors that should be considered including product positioning, demand volatility and supply chain disruption risks.
Download the free white paper to learn more.
Achieving Better Service and Profitability with More Advanced Forms of S&OP
By ARC Advisory GroupBetter service (a top driver for many companies) would be very difficult to achieve without a robust sales and operations planning (S&OP) process focused on better internal and external collaboration with the goal of more effectively balancing supply with demand. This paper explores the evolving S&OP process and discusses the specific capabilities executives are looking for in their supply chain planning and demand planning solutions.
Download the free white paper to learn more.
This white paper gives IT directors the inside track on how to adapt their supply chain to meet both the operations performance and IT challenges of the modern supply chain. It presents five powerful “secrets” that can help you move on from the linear tactics of the past, and take concrete steps toward a dynamic future and a more ideal supply chain solution for the 21st century.
Download the whitepaper to learn more.
Structuring the Outsourced Supply Chain Data Model: 10 Critical Data Issues to Consider
By KinaxisIncreasing supply chain complexity (as a result of outsourced manufacturing operations) is driving the requirement for more complex supply chain planning data models. Learn about ten critical data issues that need to be considered when structuring a supply chain model for maximum utility. This paper covers capturing core data from partners, modeling contractual terms, and simulating supply alternative strategies.
Creating a robust data model that can best deliver a real time supply chain will drive superior operations performance and customer service. Is that not a strategic necessity in today’s unforgiving business environment?
Download the whitepaper to learn more.
This white paper gives Supply Chain Managers the inside track on how to modernize their supply chain to meet the operations performance challenges of the 21st century. It presents five powerful “secrets” that can help you move on from the linear supply chain tactics of the past, and take concrete steps toward a more dynamic future. Learn the secrets and even take a survey to grade your sales and operations planning (S&OP) maturity.
Download the free white paper to learn more.
Essential Characteristics of a Supply Chain Risk Management Strategy
By KinaxisSince the early part of this decade, supply chain risk management has become increasingly more recognized as a critical part of corporate strategy. The move to leaner, global supply chains and events such as severe weather and financial instability have highlighted the risk of disrupted supply. Traditional approaches to supply chain risk management have focused on risk assessment and mitigation; but there is another side. Despite the best planning and preparation, not all events can be anticipated. When unplanned events occur, a company must be prepared to respond quickly and effectively or risk suffering financial and customer service losses.
Read this whitepaper to learn more about the capabilities required to support the two sides of supply chain risk management – mitigation and response.
The continued downward pressure on IT budgets combined with the shifting dynamics of today’s supply chains has created an environment ideally suited to be addressed by on-demand service offerings. With the right capabilities, on-demand solutions for supply chain management can offer a unique combination of tangible benefits to IT (costs savings and low IT resource requirements) as well as to the business (sophisticated computing solutions designed to excel within today’s global and collaborative supply chains).
Download the free white paper to learn more.
Beyond the Supply Chain Plan
By Ventana ResearchThe high degree of volatility in the world economy over the past several years has undercut companies' expectation that their demand and supply chain plans will remain intact. Supply Chain Planning does not stop with creating a plan; it also requires being ready to change it. Since the only constant in business is change, your organization must be able to adapt quickly to the dynamic environment. Ventana Research proposes nine key questions to ask yourself to get a sense of the opportunity your company has for improving its supply chain planning process.
Why You Need to Re-evaluate Your Approach to Supply Chain Planning
By Kinaxis™The supply chain planning approach developed in the early 1990's is failing under today's market pressures. Today's environment requires more collaboration than control; more coordination than optimization. Demand and supply chain planning, monitoring and response needs to be performed by many users, on an ad hoc basis, as events occur. A new supply chain planning paradigm is required.
Four Capabilities Required for 21st Century Sales and Operations Planning
By KinaxisSales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a process defined as long as 30 years ago. Much has changed in the structure and manner in which business is conducted since then. In addition, technology used to plan and operate a business has matured from very rudimentary MRP systems focused on manufacturing in a single site, into web based solutions for multi-tier collaboration between organizations. However, the S&OP process used by many manufacturers reflect the history of S&OP rather than the reality of today...
Enabling Sales and Operations Planning with RapidResponse
By KinaxisSales and Operations Planning organizations that leverage demand-supply planning, monitoring, and collaborative response solutions are finding themselves better equipped to power a world class S&OP process. Key capabilities include; scenario management, expressing the results of scenarios as financial measures, early alerting to consequences of decisions made elsewhere in the supply chain, and focusing users on the exceptions that require their attention.
For today's manufacturers volatility and poor visibility contribute to demand and supply imbalances on a daily basis. The challenge is in finding the formula for rapid and intelligent responses to constant, unexpected exceptions. Learn how, by investing in a Response Management solution, two global companies were able to improve forecast effectiveness and volatility management, increase visibility, and still meet customer demand.
Leveraging Response Management in a Super-Charged Environment
By KinaxisResearch In Motion (RIM) Limited, maker of the BlackBerry®, is a Canadian company experiencing massive growth in volume output, staffing, and manufacturing infrastructure. The combined pressures of a rapidly expanding customer base and shortened product lifecycles have led the company to add more contract manufacturers to the supply chain, which means that more complex decisions need to be made in less time. Existing software was not up to the challenge, so the implementation of a new decision support tool was essential to keep RIM positioned as a market leader.
Achieving Supply Chain Visibility: There is More than Meets the Eye
By KinaxisConsistently, industry research cites that one of the most important challenges facing supply chain professionals today is supply chain visibility. This could not be more true for industries such as hi-tech electronics and consumer goods, where brand owners and contract manufacturers are challenged by an environment of distributed operations, high demand volatility, and rapid product evolution –all of which make the issue of visibility all that more pressing and yet at the same time, all the more difficult to achieve.
Response Management for the Next Wave of Outsourced Manufacturing
By Technology Forecasters IncSupply chain disruptions are a way of life for many companies that have made the decision to outsource their manufacturing to factories located in geographic regions where labor costs are low. Furthermore, the old methods for compensating supply chain disruptions — with inventory buffers and forecast speculation — are being eliminated by process improvement initiatives and profitability pressures.
Beyond Supply Chain Visibility: Response Management is the Key
By Nari Viswanathan, Aberdeen Group
Supply chain visibility ranks as one of the top two application focus areas for companies as part of their supply chain technology investment plans. The ability to respond to change rapidly is emerging as critical to a company's success. Just having visibility is not enough to manage this constant change. This research brief outlines the key characteristics of solutions that go beyond visibility toward enabling a flexible Response Management capability.
Charting a New Course
By Charlie Barnhart, Technology Forecasters
The macro trends of the electronics industry are clear; lower prices, higher performance, mass customization and shorter life-cycles. All of which drives companies to outsource more activities, more often, to more regionally remote geographies than ever before. Doesn't matter if it's a consumer or a commercial product, large volume or small, a significant percentage of global outsourcing is being serviced from China today and will be from some even lower-cost region (India?) tomorrow. But does moving manufacturing to these low cost labor regions automatically mean a lower total cost of ownership?
Inventory is an ineffective measure of performance because of two fundamental flaws: (1) inventory is a post-performance metric - you are reacting to a problem versus avoiding it; and (2) because of today's modern supply chain, which is outsourced and extends to multiple companies, inventory is less visible.
Download the white paper to learn more about how using tools like Response Management you can lower the amount of money at risk in the extended supply network.
Surviving and Thriving in the Global Market
By Ann Grackin, Chainlink Research
True market leaders see change as a constant, and build a core competency in effectively responding to change into their value chain and technology enablers. This paper explores supply chain practices, making the case for a higher level approach—effective rapid response—as a key performance strategy for business, and what it takes to be a supply chain leader.
Brand owners today are continually faced with the growing pressures that result from constant demand changes. A strategic capacity to respond has quickly become an imperative for effectively managing demand volatility. Download our complimentary whitepaper and learn how you can enable a demand-driven supply chain.
Coordinating Outsourced Manufacturing: A Win-Win Proposition for OEMs and CMs
By Kinaxis
Teradyne/Solectron (now Flextronics): Overcoming Challenges in OEM/CM Relationships
By Kinaxis
Rapid Response to Change Drives Breakthroughs in Operations Performance
By Kinaxis
A Roadmap to Lean Success: Software Requirements for Reaping the Rewards of Lean
By Kinaxis
