Many shippers and 3PLs want a warehouse management solution - and one that is quipped with such capabilities as electronic data interchange - yet more than a third of businesses still use paper, pen or spreadsheets as their WMS.
Solving Efeso and the Cranfield School of Management conducted a multi-year study on how companies approach supply chain strategy at the boardroom level, correlating specific practices with supply chain performance and business success. Steve Mayhew, principal consultant at Solving Efeso, discusses the study and highlights key findings.
There is no shortage of software-as-a-service (SaaS)–based manufacturing enterprise resource planning software offerings nowadays, for almost any vertical manufacturing market segment. But while cloud and hosted solutions are routine for many types of business software across various industries, manufacturing businesses still express a lot of skepticism, uncertainty and concern about the applicability of cloud software to their business.
Brazilian children's clothing wholesaler Brascol is tagging the merchandise that retailers buy at its wholesale outlet, and has installed RFID-enabled checkout system to enable faster purchases by those customers. The RFID system, supplied by iTag Technology, relies on RFID tags made with NXP Semiconductors' Ucode7 UHF chips to quickly identify a shopping cart's contents.
Solutions that allow users to tactically plan transportation routes and optimize backhauls enable significant efficiencies, says Sara Curtis, principal consultant at Peak 5. She explains how Peak 5 works with clients to implement and leverage these applications.
TE Connectivity is a $13bn world leader in designing and manufacturing electronic connectivity products for a range of industries. Ruud Somers, director of global network design, discusses how the company uses supply chain modeling and optimization solutions to support the high service demands of its global network.
Karen Hogan, global director of operational excellence at Southco, discusses the challenges of multi-echelon inventory optimization and how Southco has used solutions from LLamasoft to integrate IO into a monthly planning process.
Few decisions have as much power to make or break a product's success and profitability as those around the sourcing of direct materials. The components, parts and assemblies that go into making products not only account for 70 percent of an average manufacturer's annual spend, they have a significant impact on such critical competitive factors as brand reputation, time to market and supply chain reliability.
