As a leading contract manufacturer of electronics, Celestica works with a diverse supply base comprised of thousands of vendors. Six years ago, the company began a major initiative to gain better visibility and control of supplier performance, an effort that led to creation of a proprietary supplier collaboration tool known as Live Share.
How we love our information systems, our management theories, our best-laid plans. And how often they fail us. It reminds me of what the playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett once said about his work. "Each time one thinks one starts fresh, new," he mused. "Yet each time one reaches the same impasse. There are many ways to begin, many roads to it, but always the same impasse at the end."
People, processes and technology are the three key areas where companies are experiencing "pain points" in their forecasting efforts, says Eric Ball, solutions manager with Avercast LLC. The people side is especially vital, given the trend within many companies of "trying to do more with less." Too often businesses rely on a new piece of technology to improve their forecasting, ignoring the need for humans to run the system. "Coupled with budget cutbacks left and right, developing personnel is a tremendous issue," he says.
Briggs Healthcare develops and markets products that are designed to improve clinical outcomes and reduce operating costs for more than 50,000 customers in the senior care, home care, acute care, physician and retail markets. "Having the right product at the right place and time and at the lowest cost is very important to us," says Brad Mueller, vice president of supply chain solutions.
In addition to technical and functional skills, supply chain managers need to hone their "soft" skills in areas like project management and change management, says Bill Seliger of R.R. Donnelly Logistics Services.
Why not use technology that locks out all but authorized users of forklifts and other vehicles in the DC and which measures the productivity of those vehicle and their operators, asks Ken Ehrman, president of I.D. Systems.
RedPrairie Corp. has released version 2012.1 of its suite of supply-chain software applications. The update links execution capabilities to the store and commerce sites, giving retailers, manufacturers and distributors greater visibility of product and data.