Supply Chain Planning Blog 

Last month I had a fantastic trip to Spain including the Gartner EMEA Supply Chain Executive Conference. I think with all the delicious fish I consumed in Barcelona I should have enough omega-3 fatty acids to power my brain function for weeks to come…Besides a shared love of food it’s clear that global businesses converging last week found common ground on the challenges of merging the digital...

With all the buzz around digital transformation, someone peering in from outside supply chain may assume most businesses have already digitised essential tasks like inventory planning. The reality is that this transformation takes time and a change of mindset. It’s about learning to transition from long-held inventory systems and processes, having new conversations across logistics and sales,...

“What was once considered disruption now becomes strategy”. This line from the opening keynote got me thinking about the continuous evolution of markets and customer expectations. What seemed like a breakthrough just a few years ago is now mainstream. Keep redefining yourself or you’re in danger of losing market share–or worse, fading into irrelevance. And it’s tougher now than ever, with an...

The world’s #2 selling vodka brand leaves nothing to chance when it comes to quality and sustainability. Here’s how they teamed up with ToolsGroup partner Optilon for a seamless supply chain planning process.

Anyone who has done demand planning knows it is extremely complex, with forecasting challenges and rapidly shifting consumer demand, often exacerbated by seasonality, new product introductions, promotions, and myriad causal factors (e.g. weather, social media). The good news is that these characteristics make demand planning a perfect fit for artificial intelligence solutions. In fact, supply...

With supply chain complexity increasing at an unprecedented rate, perhaps the biggest challenge for businesses is figuring out how to navigate this uncertainty to deliver service profitably.

Outsourcing non-core business processes has been a time-tested way to cut costs while improving performance. Initially companies focused on functions like Finance and HR. But now they have started outsourcing supply chain business processes like demand planning, allowing them to focus on other business processes while gaining access to world class capabilities.

Gartner analyst Paul Lord has developed a framework to better understand inventory trade-offs by categorising those decisions according to the objectives they are meant to achieve: structural, operational and situational.

When a business finds itself in a declining market, failing to stay in lock step with customer demand poses an existential threat. Trends and other market forces that impact commercial opportunities need to appear on the planning radar. Therefore, traditional push-driven supply chains are wholly unfit for this situation.