If you're responsible for supply chain management or providing supply chain services, reducing your carbon footprint is likely becoming a priority. So how do you get there from here? One route to sustainability is ISO 14001 certification. Here's the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of getting there.
It is not enough for global businesses to know that in coming years China's economy will move away from an over-reliance on investment and toward more consumption. They also must know that the potential costs and benefits of rebalancing the world's second-largest economy are high and will affect industries not only domestically but also around the world.
Is reshoring (the return of manufacturing to the U.S.) really even a debate? A debate would indicate that there are two compelling sides to the argument, but from what I see, the hard and fast facts of the economy preclude a debate.
More than 30 years ago, when I began writing about transportation and logistics, one of the first pieces that I did was about the imminent demise of the U.S. merchant marine. Today, I find myself addressing the same issue. As industries go, this has got to be one of the slowest deaths on record.
Rick Davis, vice president of business planning with Kellogg USA, makes the case for applying sophisticated demand-sensing capabilities to the planning and forecasting process.
The term "global trade management" used to mean one thing: compliance. Not anymore. Today, GTM embraces the whole experience of moving goods across borders: regulation, duty management, logistics and, most of all, global supply-chain visibility.
Demand management as a pursuit, a skill, a function and a set of technologies has grown considerably in importance due to new ways to reach customers and new ways to analyze data about them. Intense competition for product companies and retailers and the squeeze on margins challenge companies to get a lot better at planning.
This is one of the great barriers to lean implementation: Concepts of lean are both counterintuitive and counter-cultural. Hence, if you wish to be a lean leader, you must go back to the basics and make sure you have a clear understanding before you are able to teach others.
The balance of world economic growth is tipping in another direction. Just as economists have begun lowering their forecasts for China and many other developing economies, the American economy is bouncing back. Japan appears to have turned a corner and is ending almost two decades of grinding deflation. Economic data out of Europe on Wednesday provided the first solid indication that many countries in the euro zone may be escaping the clutches of recession.
Remember when words like "globalization" seemed to be enough to drive some folks into the streets in protest? Surely, most of us have accepted that business is the way of the world. That's especially true when it is almost as easy to do trade with someone halfway around the globe as it is halfway across town. Just look at how interwoven we are in world commerce.
.webp?height=100&t=1784121195&width=150 "018_what's_holding_back_ai_initiatives-_v1-(540p).png")
