What is Supply Chain Best Practice? (Part 3)

from scdigest.com

As regular readers know, earlier this year we took on the subject of supply chain best practice, asking if there really was such a thing. (See What is Supply Chain Management Best Practice?) That led to lots of feedback, and a column that summarizes that (See Readers Respond – Supply Chain Best Practice).

Fortunately for me, that second column led to still more feedback, which we highlight here, because there are again some insightful responses.

In truth, I was going to do a review this week of Dave Blanchard’s book “Supply Chain Management Best Practices,” a copy of which he kindly sent after the first column. The plan was to combine that review with some reader feedback, but I found there just wasn’t room, so it’s feedback first, the review a bit later this summer.

Inside Dell: The secrets of its supply chain success

from reliableplant.com

What does it take for a US$60 billion high-tech giant like Dell Inc. to compete in today’s margin-hungry personal computer market? “We are always looking for ways to take out waste, to take out time and take out costs, and then passing those savings along to our customer,” says Dave Schneider, continuous improvement engineering manager for Dell Americas operations.

To meet these goals, Dell relies on a unique supply chain strategy that gathers large volumes of customer information through its direct-sales model and shares it with internal procurement and sales departments, as well as external suppliers.

LogicTools Symposium to Address Risk in the Global Supply Chain

from businesswire.com

LogicTools, a division of ILOG® (NASDAQ: ILOG, Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364), today opened registration for its sixth-annual symposium, Supply Chain Excellence 2007: Managing Risk in the Global Supply Chain. The event will address how trends, including outsourcing, off-shoring and lean manufacturing that focus on reducing supply chain costs, can significantly increase the level of risk in the supply chain. Attendees will take part in an expanded conference program tailored toward identifying key sources of risk in the supply chain as well as strategies and tactics for managing that risk in their respective industries.

The conference will be held on September 27 in conjunction with LogicTools’ annual user conference on September 28 at The Metropolitan Club at Sears Tower in Chicago. Speakers include leading supply chain authority, Mark Hillman, Research Director, AMR Research, Sharan Singanamala, Strategic Logistics Planning Manager, GE Healthcare, David Simchi-Levi, Co-founder of LogicTools and Professor of Engineering Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Jean-François Abramatic, Vice President and Chief Product Officer, ILOG.

Towards a better and cheaper retail supply chain

from innovations-report.de

Piet van der Vlist of RSM Erasmus University designed a retail supply chain that is better and cheaper than the usual one. In the retail supply chain most of the product value is created upstream at the supplier.

By extending the Newsvendor-formula it can be proven that from the point where most of the value is created, inventory should move all the way downstream. He will defend his PhD thesis ‘Synchronizing the Retail Supply Chain’ on June 29th, 2007 (Friday) 16:00 hours at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

NYK supply chain unit opens Norfolk facility

from cargonewsasia.com

NYK Logistics (Americas) Inc, an affiliate of Japan- based Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) has opened a logictics centre in Norfolk, Chesapeake in Virginia.

The cross-dock facility comprises more than 130,000 sq ft on 35 acres of land. The structure will have 182 dock doors, and over 770 parking slots designed to streamline port-related distribution and development activities.

Youngs to optimise supply chain response times

from logisticsmanager.com

Young’s Seafood has started implementation of forecasting and production planning software through TXT e-solutions to optimise supply chain response times and facilitate accurate planning across its entire business.
The £1m overhaul of its IT systems is expected to halve its long-term forecast error rate and improve the way it serves its retail customers. The project will enable the company to cut waste and ensure retailers get exactly what they need.

TAKE Solutions buys ClearOrbit for $20.6mn

from business-standard.com

Information system product firm TAKE Solutions has acquired Texas-based supply chain execution provider ClearOrbit Inc for $20.6 million (nearly Rs 86.5 crore) in an all-cash deal on Monday.

Greater Efficiencies in Supply Chain Management Ensure RFID Growth in Asia Pacific

from newswiretoday.com

Buoyed by the success of the increasing numbers of radio frequency identification (RFID) pilots and projects in supply chains, end users are becoming progressively keen on utilizing RFID in supply chains. They are realizing that better visibility will aid the creation of a more efficiently managed supply chain, which will enable them to reduce their overall operational cost. They can achieve greater efficiencies if the RFID project deployment takes place on an end-to-end scale.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (autoid.frost.com), Asia Pacific RFID Supply Chain Market, reveals that the market earned revenues of $170.3 million in 2006 and estimates this to reach $646.3 million in 2013.

Four Member Hospitals Win First-Ever Premier Supply Chain Innovation Awards

from businesswire.com

Premier has honored four alliance members for achieving successful innovations that have created new levels of performance and competitive advantage by awarding them the healthcare purchasing network’s first-ever Supply Chain Innovation Awards.

The awards were presented in ceremonies during Premier’s Annual Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition which was held June 19-22 in Orlando, Fla. Winners as determined by a nine-member panel of external, internal and member judges are:

Apotex Selects ValueCentric

from earthtimes.org

ValueCentric, LLC®, the leading provider of on-demand data management and performance analytics to the pharmaceutical industry, today announced that Apotex Corp. has selected the company’s award-winning ValueTrak® solution to forecast and monitor supply chain movement for its extensive generic product line. Apotex produces over 260 generic drugs in more than 4,000 dosages and formats and markets its products in 115 countries worldwide.