As a leading contract manufacturer of electronics, Celestica works with a diverse supply base comprised of thousands of vendors. Six years ago, the company began a major initiative to gain better visibility and control of supplier performance, an effort that led to creation of a proprietary supplier collaboration tool known as Live Share.
LeanLogistics, a provider of transportation-management system (TMS) software, has adapted its On-Demand TMS SuiteApp for the NetSuite SuiteCloud computing platform.
Arena Solutions, a vendor of cloud-based product lifecycle-management (PLM) software for managing bills of materials (BOMs), has forged a partnership with Octopart, a search engine for electronic parts.
As a tier one automotive supplier, Active Tools International knows the importance of avoiding and mitigating supply chain disruptions. Bill Keller, president of global operations, says the company has developed written risk mitigation plans that emphasize the use of dual sourcing of parts.
In the last year the headlines have been full of news about global supply chains and the disasters affecting them. From the Thai floods to the Japanese tsunami, to the tornadoes in Wichita and the Nylon-12 plant explosion in Germany, several fundamental truths about global supply chains have been made more apparent.
Back in the 1990s there was a popular series of picture books with an unusual twist. When you looked at the pictures on the surface you would see an intricate two-dimensional image that was mildly interesting. But if you learned how to look past the surface, suddenly a much richer and deeper three-dimensional image would reveal itself. Seeing it took extra work - some people would get very frustrated when they couldn't get it to appear - but the reward made it worth the effort.
There are good reasons why a formal process for conflict resolution is necessary in the context of supply chains, says Stewart L. Levine, founder of ResolutionWorks. The very nature of supply chains, with their panoply of internal and external partners, gives rise to conflict. What's needed, he says, "is a conversational process whereby you can teach people how to move through conflict."
