Supply Chain & Transportation

In the northern hemisphere, Fall / Autumn has begun. With that comes the harvest and in particular, apples! However, we are not going to talk about the fruit but about the technology company, Apple.

Our previous post began exploring the seven key traits to look for in a SCM partner. It included the first four. Here are the last three attributes you want a SCM software partner to have ...

The logistics industry needs a more diverse workforce, but it suffers from poor perceptions about career opportunities. Melanie Hall shares her experiences as woman in the sector

The 2013 Red Cross disaster report takes a close look at how technology can help with humanitarian activities. When there is a natural catastrophe, access to information is as important as to food and drink. NGOs are taking to geo-spatial mobile technology to collect data in real time in relation to people affected or about to be. You can warn a whole population in a hurry if it has smartphones.

A rite of passage for new Sloan MBA students provides lessons in systems thinking.

(Watch the introduction video on the right.)

Want a fast accurate diagram and map of your supply chain?

How about automatic alerts for earthquakes, strikes, and floods?  

This project brings together two concepts:

Automatically draw a flow diagram and a map of a company’s supply chain based on data stored in its corporate databases, andSuperimpose visual displays of alerts and other critical information on top of these images.

Examples of the kinds of critical information to be displayed includes:

Locations of your plants, suppliers, customers, and major transportation lanesAlerts of Natural Disasters, Strikes and Protests, Infrastructure Failure, etc.Heat Maps (frequency diagrams) of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc.Inventory Deployment ($ and Days of Supply) across the networkCapacity Constraints (bottlenecks) in the networkRisk Pathways (most vulnerable segments) across the networkCost Accumulation across the networkCycle Time Accumulation across the network, andMarket Share Impacts of major eventsLater – Carbon Use Across the NetworkLater – Water Use Across the Network

Until now, transportation and network analysts have needed to spend weeks collecting scattered information about suppliers, freight lanes, customers, and products in order to create a network flow diagram. And then it becomes out of date a few months later.

When brand-name companies distance themselves from their products' design and supply-chain management, they take a step backwards from corporate responsibility. They can lose competitive design advances including environmental efficiencies; as well as assurance of regulatory compliance, IP security; and visibility to supply-chain quality and worker conditions.

Floods, earthquakes, typhoons, pandemics, and other natural and manmade disasters show how precarious the global IT supply chains can be.

Are you supply chain management professionals who are looking for inspiring ideas to improve the operations of your supply chain? This article will show you 10 amazing SCM books that provide information you can really use.

It’s not enough to have a great product to be successful. Companies also need an effective supply chain to be competitive.

Companies are overlooking the danger of cyber attacks to their supply chains that could result in lost income and increased operating expenses.

New global standard for hospital supply chain process
Transport and Logistics News
A GS1 healthcare work group has developed a new GS1 standard to provide guidance on how to identify healthcare products at the single-unit level.

Fashion industry is one of the most primitive form of supply chain management and its practices have been extended, adopted and become best practices that we use today. This article will show you the development of fashion industry and how one company manages to bring operations into the next level.