Analyst Insight: The Warehousing Education and Research Council's latest benchmarking study shows that the performance gap between best-in-class and "Major Opportunity" warehouses remains large. In order to close the performance gap, Major Opportunity warehouses need to understand how to find their process weeds and pull them up by the roots. By aligning shop floor metrics to corporate strategy, companies link accountability to where the work gets done and will begin to close the gap. - Joe Tillman, senior researcher, Supply Chain Visions

Analyst's Insight: Every day in the trade press and across our laptops, we read about infrastructure weaknesses, transportation shortages, closing businesses, unemployment rates and all the other ills associated with the dreaded "R" word - recession. We know from our members how challenging these past few years have been, and we support and admire the collaboration and focus on best practices that are clearly evident and becoming more and more important in logistics. - Michael Mikitka, CEO, Warehousing Education and Research Council

Analyst Insight: At the beginning of 2011, IDC Manufacturing Insights predicted that supply chain visibility would climb on the IT application priority list as manufacturing companies identified the business cases to improve both service levels and dollars saved. This held true throughout the year as manufacturers get a handle on what visibility means to their organizations in a tactical, rather than strategic, manner. - Simon Ellis, practice director, Supply Chain Strategies, IDC Manufacturing Insights

Analyst Insight: Ditching spreadsheet programs and stand-alone supply chain solutions for integrated software solutions is key to increasing visibility throughout the supply chain. By improving visibility, supply chain leaders can further optimize inventory and improve forecasting abilities, as well as increase the business's ability to react to disaster within the supply chain - a top priority for many executives. - Michael Koploy, ERP analyst, Software Advice

Analyst Insight: Supplier segmentation is a critical foundational component for executing on your supply management strategies and for understanding and building value in the supply network. Supplier segmentation supports an end-to-end supply chain segmentation strategy. However, it must be aligned with downstream processes to ultimately deliver value to customers. Unfortunately, Gartner Supply Chain research finds two-thirds of organizations take a one-size-fits-all view to supplier relationship management, resulting in misaligned resources and little delivered value. - Mickey North Rizza, Gartner Supply Chain Research

Analyst Insight: The top strategic action tied to improving parts management for service and support organizations in a recent Aberdeen research study on service parts logistics was to integrate service parts planning, forecasting and execution with overall logistics functions (i.e., procurement, supply chain management, inventory management) to ensure the delivery of the right part to the end customer when an asset goes down or is not operating at full efficiency. - Aly Pinder Jr., senior research associate, Aberdeen Group