Business agility is overtaking efficiency as the key competency required to thrive in unpredictable economies.

Manufacturers and retailers often source materials, components or finished products from low-cost countries to improve cost-competitiveness, despite the greater risk of trade wars and other disruptions in extended, global supply chains.

It’s usually because many people don’t know the difference between inventory fulfillment in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and a dedicated, modern warehouse management software system (WMS). These two systems go head-to-head in this guide from Deposco.

Keeping excess inventory as a safety strategy is a losing proposition for companies. It doesn’t work because companies often hold inventory that’s not usable or is obsolete, representing a dead loss, sometimes on the order of tens of millions of dollars a year, to the company.

Implementing intelligent materials systems that are simple, purpose-built and sustainable is important when embarking on an effort to optimize supply networks.

Supply Chain Dive and Deposco surveyed 160+ retail, manufacturing, wholesale, and 3PL/4PL supply chain professionals to find out how their warehouse management teams are handling the latest peak season trends and challenges of today. 

The supply chain of the future has clear visibility and is collaborative. Organizations will need to understand the state of the supply chain in real time, while aligning cross-functionally to reduce ad-hoc firefighting.

As a company responds to and predicts consumer trends, it will make a series of assumptions about those trends that inform its demand planning.

One of the curses of the Great Supply Chain Disruption of 2020 was the phenomenon known as “the bullwhip effect.” 

Is sales and operations planning obsolete? Not at all, says Evan Quasney, vice president of solutions marketing with Anaplan. But there's a need for organizations to take a deeper approach to connected planning, to achieve competitive advantage.