Blog Entries: Demand volatility

Re-thinking supply chain risk and resiliency

Rich Becks, General Manager, High Technology, E2open - Friday, March 02, 2012 - 0 Comments

In the last decade, supply chain visionaries have promoted outsourced manufacturing, vendor managed inventory (VMI), and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) to handle everything from procurement and materials handling to manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing. And while the projected cost savings were compelling, many businesses worried that sacrificing control of these critical operations would introduce a number of business risks—specifically, would outsourced vendors act in their own self interest, as opposed to supporting the needs of the end consumers? More »
Supply chain as a strategy and other key takeaways from the CSCO Summit

Nadjya Ghausi, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, E2open - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - 0 Comments

I'm just getting back from the Windy City, where the CSCO (Chief Supply Chain Officer) Summit took place last week. It was a great mix of Consumer Package Goods (CPG), High Tech, Pharma, Biotech and Supply Chain industry analysts – all sharing insights about what's working, and what the next set of challenges will be, for supply chains, from the executive point of view. More »
Top 5 reasons to start thinking multi-tier…

Sean Rollings, Vice President, Product Marketing, E2open - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - 0 Comments

I'm sure you've heard it before: linear supply chains are a thing of the past. Today's marketplace is run by sprawling trading networks, and that means it's no longer good enough to keep tabs on your most critical suppliers. In today's outsourced and unpredictable manufacturing landscape, even your Tier-2 suppliers have the power to make or break a new product launch... More »
If I don’t see it, it isn’t happening…right? Managing change in the extended supply chain.

Karthik Rajagopal, Director, Customer Solutions, E2open - Tuesday, August 09, 2011 - 0 Comments

You’ve heard it before: when it comes to global supply chain operations, change is the only constant. (And the same holds true for customer demand, technology solutions, the macroeconomic environment, and on and on…) But for an adage that is so widely accepted by supply chain practitioners, little progress seems to have been made to deal with and manage this constant change. More »
Collaboration networks: Tackling the challenges of large-scale change

Cesare Rotundo, Director, Customer Solutions, E2open - Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 0 Comments

In the first blog of this series I positioned “rupture points” as key drivers of supply chain collaboration for today’s international manufacturers. Rupture points appear when competitive pressures force deep changes in the supply chain strategy. For this blog, I’ll focus on a rupture point caused by “vertical” motions developed across multiple tiers of outsourced trading partners. More »
What’s driving supply chain collaboration? Rupture points.

Cesare Rotundo, Director, Customer Solutions, E2open - Friday, July 22, 2011 - 0 Comments

After analyzing the reasons why some companies make supply chain collaboration an investment priority, I noticed that for many of them the decision comes after they experience firsthand “rupture points” in their value chains. What is a rupture point in this context? At any point in time, the extended supply chain of an enterprise is under pressure by market dynamics—including competitive pressure in the form of product capabilities and price wars, demand volatility... More »
As good as it gets? Notes from a CPG buff.

Bill Goodison, Vice President, Consumer Goods, E2open - Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 0 Comments

In my last blog post, I touched on some of the top supply chain challenges facing the CPG industry—and recommended that visibility and collaboration were the surest ways to get the CPG supply chain back on track. Today I want to take the conversation a bit further, and suggest that visibility and collaboration may also be the first stepping stones to something much larger and visionary—namely, a Supply Chain Control Tower... More »
Did he just say the “G” word? Momentum and discovery at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference

Sean Rollings, Vice President, Product Marketing, E2open - Wednesday, June 01, 2011 - 0 Comments

Day one got off to a great start with a joint keynote by Gartner analysts Jane Barrett, Simon Jacobsen, Matt Davis, and Kevin Sterneckert. The first thing that struck me is that attendance has doubled from 500 last year to more than a thousand this year. And the feel among attendees and keynote speakers is that companies are breaking free from their recession-driven retrenchment and readying for growth. More »
The semiconductor industry: A much-needed revisit

Brent Proud, Program Director, E2open - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - 0 Comments

Over pizza and beers last night, I had the alarming realization that my knowledge of the semiconductor industry was woefully out of date. My colleague, and dinner companion, does a significant amount of work with our semiconductor customers—so naturally, the conversation steered itself in that direction. Of course, I reacted the same way I always do when I don’t quite know what I’m talking about—smile, nod, and change the subject. More »
Mom, he’s not sharing! The growing (up) importance of supplier collaboration

Rob Schoenthaler, Senior Vice President, Deployment, E2open - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - 0 Comments

I spend the bulk of my professional life talking to successful international brand owners and manufacturers. Whether they’re producing computer chips or lipstick, their core supply chain problems are pretty much the same: complexity and loss of control – both as a result of increased outsourcing. More »