Analyst Insight: The decision to initiate or continue global sourcing is not a simple one to make. Organizations have many factors to consider, both external and internal, and those factors can change. Organizations must revisit their sourcing strategy often to ensure that they are maintaining the best value. - Becky Partida, knowledge specialist, APQC
Analyst Insight: Today's supply chains are efficient, and inflexible. Market conditions change, but planning continues based on historical information. Global supply chains need better planning, but traditional technologies are not up to the task. New technologies are emerging to help to fill the gap. We are entering the era of Big Data Supply Chains that will sense before responding and learn before acting. - Lora Cecere, partner, Altimeter Group
Descartes Systems Group has created a pair of cloud-based services to help air freight forwarders comply with U.S. and European security filing requirements.
Analyst Insight: There were more than 2,000 supply chain disruptions for publicly held companies in 2011. That, coupled with PRTM's 2010 global survey stating that over 90 percent of all companies plan to grow market share by manufacturing and selling in overseas markets, it goes without saying that our global supply chains will experience additional uncertainty, complexity and risk in 2012. And yet, the vast majority of manufacturers are fully unprepared for the complexity of manufacturing and servicing global customers with regionally customized products. - Gregory L. Schlegel, adjunct professor, Supply Chain Risk Management, Graduate Program, Lehigh University
Initiatives such as the Global Supply Chain Forum, which resides at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, give the business world access to academic expertise and valuable research, says forum director Douglas M. Lambert. Such efforts are becoming more common, he says, adding that "the business community ought to be our laboratory."
Although the Food Safety and Modernization Act of 2010 was passed nearly a year ago, and food and beverage companies have had a significant period of time to calculate and understand its impact, and implement traceability solutions, there are still many issues and processes to be resolved or implemented before food and beverage enterprises can be considered 100-percent compliant.
Analyst Insight: While on one hand the container shipping industry has become ever more commoditized, a new range of service measurements could increase the potential for market differentiation. The key to any differentiation is the ability to make it clear to the customer what the difference is. Such transparency would certainly be a novelty in the industry. - Lars Jensen, CEO, SeaIntel Maritime Analysis
Analyst Insight: As the global economy slowly begins to improve, large-scale manufacturers who ship bulk product by rail are again experiencing the issues of service reliability, asset turnover, capacity constraints, working capital optimization and risk. With that said, after the dismal 2008-2009 economy, we're right back into the bane of a one-hundred-year rail dilemma: enhancing service reliability while improving fleet utilization to sustain a lean rail fleet. Current rail management tools are effective at tracking historical transit times and identifying the position of each car at a certain point in time. However, an important disconnect exists between seeing the future demand for rail shipments and predicting the usage and location of the cars over the entire enterprise planning horizon.
- Alfred Sherk, CEO, SherTrack LLC
