If you have been following my blog for a while now, you might have picked up that I like the change management author Rick Maurer. He writes in a simplistic and humoristic way about the sometimes serious topic of change. I’ve used his 3 level resistance model from his book ‘Beyond the wall of resistance’ to map key stakeholders up to the most senior level … Continue reading A humble change lesson
Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in the positive psychology, ‘Flow’ is the mental state in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are … Continue reading Is your supply chain in flow?
The last couple of weeks I read it several times. ‘Supply chains must be demand driven’, or ‘you have to be agile to survive in today’s global competitive environment’, ‘you’re agile or you’re dead!’. Some S&OP models suggest that being demand driven is the highest form of maturity. This seems mostly advocated by AMR Research and Gartner. Before you think otherwise, let me tell you that I … Continue reading Demand driven & agile supply chains
I have to admit. I’m going against my own religion. This week I had a scoping session with an app developer, to create an app for the greatest idea in the world. Fortunately it’s my own idea! As an IBP manager I’m daily in contact with marketeers on their great innovation ideas. I make sure they follow the rules of the stage gate process, where based on … Continue reading Supply Chain apps
Since I came to Australia I know that black swans are common. I actually go regularly feed these swans with my two girls. For my two girls, black swans are as any duck or sheep; perfectly common animals. According to Taleb in his book The Black Swan, black swans follow the 3 following criteria: The event is a surprise for the observer The event has … Continue reading Most Black Swans are business as usual
As an MSc in operations management, I started my career analysing inventory parameters in a 35 main distribution centre, up to 350 locations, four level multi-echelon inventory network. The odd 100.000 spare parts my department was planning ranged from 0.01 US$ to 200k US$ in cost price and demand ranged from less then 1 spare part a year to over a 1000. The whole goal … Continue reading In optimization, settle for the near optimum
Around 2500 years ago a strange, awkward guy was strolling the streets of Athens. He would walk up to people and start conversation and ask questions about life, religion, and politics. He would challenge their answers and usually got them stuck in their own reasoning and arguments. By asking questions, Socrates made his targets starting question their own beliefs and purpose. If we want to … Continue reading Know thy Supply Chain!
Last week I wrote a blog on Demand Poetry… well actually more on the need to use demand assumptions in the forecasting process. You can read it here: https://supplychaintrends.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/forecasting-poetry/. That made me think about the use of demand assumptions and other types of demand terminologies used in day to day forecasting and planning jargon. I made a 3 question survey to get some insight in terminologies … Continue reading Demand Terminologies
The variables in demand forecasting are endless. We have advanced planning systems to manage many of them and processes like demand shaping, demand sensing, demand control, demand management or S&OP/IBP to influence or come to consensus forecast. There is research from Paul Goodwin, professor of Management Science at Bath University that suggests better not to touch system forecast at all, if changes to the forecast … Continue reading Forecasting Poetry
In a recent online article on S&OP at Sony, http://www.supplychainquarterly.com/topics/Strategy/scq201101sony/, Vice president of Supply Chain Operations Yuka Yu uses the term ‘trusted chain’ rather then supply chain. According to Yu, this term emphasizes that the strong relationships between Sony and its partners depends on mutual trust and communication. As many of us will know, implementing CPFR and S&OP like Sony did, requires internal and external … Continue reading The Trusted Chain
Supply Chain Trend 