A report on customer's mobile experience with large companies has revealed that only 21 percent of supply chain companies ranked their company's mobile presence at 90 percent or above.
At the core of supply chain trends in healthcare is a need for quality data so that leaders can make informed, quality decisions. Quality data means accurate data for sourcing and procurement along with normalisation of data for reporting and predictive analytics.
Chief information officers (CIOs) in transport and logistics have an unprecedented opportunity to take a leading role in their organisations, thanks in part to the rise of "shadow IT".
Investing in ways to become more environmentally friendly is good for business. It makes financial sense and helps to differentiate transport providers in an increasingly crowded market.
Last year Target opened 124 stores across Canada, with disastrous consequences that are only just starting to be felt financially. Items were coming into the distribution centres sporadically and then piling up in storage, partly due to the barcodes not corresponding with the warehouse management system.
Any attempt to apply "lean" thinking to a manufacturer or retailer's supply chain must have merchandise lifecycle plans in alignment with supply chain strategy to succeed, according to the vice president of strategic services at software company JDA.
Bamboo is now being utilized in container floors as the rail and intermodal industry continues its drive to improve the environmental and economic efficiency of its operations. A report by the Container Owner's Association has found that the production volume of containers fitted with floors using materials other than the traditional tropical hardwood plywood has gradually risen over the past two years.
The rise of global sourcing as a means to minimize costs has had the unintended consequence of increasing risk. Dependence on an increasing number of suppliers makes it difficult to monitor their performance without automated metrics. According to a 2013 Supply Chain Resilience Survey, 75 percent of organizations experienced at least one supply chain disruption incident in the past year.
The past couple of decades have been marked by a stream of organizations shifting operations abroad, lured by the promise of cheap labor and production. However, this dynamic is changing amidst rising costs and an increasingly complex global supply chain. Now, the trend is to at least consider re-shoring.
