Strategic Objectives
Delivery
Implementing MRP, inventory record accuracy and master scheduling ensures timely order fulfillment, improving delivery performance and customer satisfaction.
My Delivery Project Summary
Number of Projects
7
Average % Improvement
92%
Average $ Improvement
$1.74m
Average ROI
112
My Delivery Related Articles
Take Control of your Supply Chain with this Powerful Practice
Sometimes inventory can be allocated and shipped in the blink of an eye. This is fantastic and the warehouse gets kudos for being so efficient. However, what if that shipment will cause a stockout for an “A” item, and the next delivery is not anticipated for 2 months. Even worse, what if the customer that took the remaining inventory was a “C” customer, and the next day a strategic customer places an order for the same item?
Read More…
Take Control of your Supply Chain with this Powerful Practice
A Cautionary Tale about Forecast Inaccuracy
An excerpt from my new book: Forecasting Demystified
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future! —Niels Bohr, Danish physicist
Night of the Long Knives
I came into work one morning to learn that most of the senior management team had been fired. In the following few months, everything was different at the company where I had worked for five years. The most tangible change was that the company closed the plush corporate office where I had worked. They gave me a choice: relocate to the manufacturing site or adios. Given that I had a wife and three kids settled in a lovely small town on the water, with many good friends, there was no desirable choice. In the end, we reluctantly relocated from the San Francisco area to be close to the manufacturing site in Southern California.
Read More…
A Cautionary Tale about Forecast Inaccuracy
You Might Be Managing an Under-Performing Supply Chain Planning System if...
What is the capability level of your supply chain planning system? Check out my maturity model below for what an under-performing supply chain planning system looks like. Unfortunately, I’ve had more experience of under-performing supply chain planning systems, than performing ones.
Read More…
You Might Be Managing an Under-Performing Supply Chain Planning System if…
0% of Supply Chain Professionals Answered this Question Incorrectly - Customers Beware!
I recently created this quiz on Linkedin about when to utilize Available to Promise (ATP) functionality. Out of 52 votes, only 38% selected the correct response, which suggests that there is a definite knowledge gap on this important topic.
Read More…
0% of Supply Chain Professionals Answered this Question Incorrectly – Customers Beware!
One Key Practice to Help Build Trust with Your Customers
If we assume that the ability to deliver the perfect profitable order is the primary goal of any supply chain, then the ability to accurately predict when a customer order will be available is clearly an important capability. For make to stock (MTS) environments, this functionality is called Available to Promise (ATP), and Capable to Promise (CTP) in a make to order (MTO) environment. Here is how they work:
Read More…
One Key Practice to Help Build Trust with Your Customers
Daily Visual Management
As COVID-19 has so clearly reminded us, supply chains are inherently dynamic! No doubt you experience unplanned events on a regular basis, such as sudden demand changes, canceled customer orders, inbound shipment delays, supplier quality issues, etc.
In addition, you will also be all too familiar with miscommunications between departments, causing delays and missteps. For example, the quality group not prioritizing items needed to prevent production shutdowns, or purchasing placing a large material order for an item whose demand has just been drastically reduced due to its removal of the bill of material.
Read More…
Daily Visual Management
Customers Want to Know When Will their Products Arrive. Why is it so difficult?
I have found this topic to be excruciatingly difficult, given how simple it seems. I am referring to dates associated with a customer order, including order receipt date, order entry date, request date, original promise date, revised promise date, ship date, delivery date, etc. I may have been just unfortunate, but in my experience, most companies are not aligned on the definition of each date, and they do not manage them effectively. This is not a trivial matter. Without clarity here, we are unable to confidently answer some of the most basic supply chain-related questions:
Read More…
Customers Want to Know When Will their Products Arrive. Why is it so difficult?
5 Ways to Take Control of your Ability to Ship On-Time
This week we’ll focus on how to manage commitments made to your customers.
Challenge
In this shortage economy, many of you will be struggling to maintain on time shipments to your customers. However, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most of your supply issues are very much within your control, so it is time to take the bull by the horns!
Solution Here are 5 techniques that I have repeatedly utilized to improve on-time shipment performance:
Read More…
5 Ways to Take Control of your Ability to Ship On-Time
How to cut through the complexity and achieve your strategic objectives
I’m sure that your daily life as a supply chain leader is often chaotic and full of complexity. I know, I have also been living it for over 25 years – I had a full head of hair when I started. In this environment it can be very challenging to take a step back, and think about achieving strategic objectives, and continuous improvement of your operations. Your day is all about “putting out fires” not preventing them. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have an uncomplicated, easy to learn method to figure out which projects would have the largest impact on your supply chain objectives, and easily measure current performance and monitor progress over time. Unlike many solutions out there, it can be implemented immediately and it will enable sustained success over the long run.
Read More…
How to cut through the complexity and achieve your strategic objectives
Take the Road Less Traveled to Quickly Achieve your Supply Chain Targets
For all those managers and future managers out there, your suggestions on how to improve performance must be based upon data, or you will fail.
Case Study
At one client that was challenged with low on-time shipment performance, I was asked to help them solve the issue. The goal was to improve from <70% to 95% on-time within one quarter. We did all the right things – formed a team, analyzed late order data and proposed solutions, with the following conclusions:
Read More…
Take the Road Less Traveled to Quickly Achieve your Supply Chain Targets
Your first 2 steps to minimize supply risk and to reduce those sleepless nights!
It seems that we are in a new normal, with the continual threat of material shortages! If you want to avoid permanent sleepless nights, your organization must get it’s act together regarding planning and scheduling. This obviously means different things to different organizations. However, from 25+ years running life science supply chains and teaching APICS supply chain certification classes for most of that time, I can share some commonalities from all that experience. So where should you start?
Read More…
Your first 2 steps to minimize supply risk and to reduce those sleepless nights!
Operational Mediocrity Endangers Lives!
Supply chain professionals recognize the critical role of operational excellence, but a recent conversation with a nurse emphasized its heightened significance in healthcare. Operational lapses here can have severe consequences for the patient, as illustrated by a distressing incident recounted by the nurse.
A child patient with a chronic condition requiring stomach tube feeding suffered due to an administrative oversight. The incorrect tube size prescribed caused irritation and inflammation, leading to prolonged discomfort. Despite repeated hospital visits, the issue persisted until a vigilant nurse identified the root cause.
Read More…
Operational Mediocrity Endangers Lives!
1 approach to quickly achieving on-time delivery that your patients hope you will learn
In this week’s article, I will share an excerpt from my book, which has been written with the life science supply chain leader in mind. In the book, I present a framework for rapidly and sustainably transforming your supply chain performance and capability. This framework can be applied to any industry, but I deliberately selected many anecdotes and stories from my own experiences. In addition, there were several life science supply chain leaders who generously volunteered their time and contributed to the book. This excerpt speaks to how to align your supply chain metrics with your strategic objectives. For example, let’s say that your organization has set a goal of improving customer satisfaction with your supply chain performance. You would need to select metrics that measure your progress to this objective.
Read More…
1 approach to quickly achieving on-time delivery that your patients hope you will learn
Getting from Objective to Result as Quickly as the Crow Flies
As you can see from the table below, the Mine the Gaps methodology can be utilized to achieve most supply chain strategic objectives. In this table, you can see the key gaps identified utilizing root cause analysis, solutions to address those gaps, and the results.
For example, at one client, the objective was to improve customer service. We improved on-time delivery from below 80% to 95% in less than four months simply by monitoring late orders on a daily basis for a few weeks in a cross- functional team environment. This approach had much more alignment and harmony than if each department was investigating these issues in silos.
Read More…
Getting from Objective to Result as Quickly as the Crow Flies
How to win a game of Whack-a-Mole in your Supply Chain
In most organizations, when an issue occurs, they are satisfied to put out the proverbial fire, until the next time. If you have ever played whack-a-mole at the fair, it is like that. Every time the mole pops their head up, you whack it with the hammer, but you never know which hole it will pop its head through next.
Merely putting out the fire or whacking the mole is a Level 1 Fix. It is not very effective because you are only dealing with the symptom, not the root cause. It is like if you are continually having headaches, and just taking pain killers to make yourself feel better today, but not going to see your doctor to find out what is causing the headache.
Read More…
How to win a game of Whack-a-Mole in your Supply Chain
How to turn lemons to lemonade in any supply chain
What you will learn in this article
- How to find “quick wins” to achieve your supply chain objectives within a quarter
- How to identify the projects that will ACTUALLY “move the needle”
- Which readily available data to leverage for success, and which data to ignore
- What specific data to analyze for virtually any supply chain objective
- When not to rely upon technology to achieve your objectives
- How to build organizational alignment for selected projects
Read More…
