Blog

Blog Entries: Inventory management

• A fresh look at E&O inventory

  Edward Toung, Vice President, Asia Pacific, E2open - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - 0 Comments
  

  I recently spoke with a supply chain leader who said inventory was like fruit: if you have too much and have it too long, things get rotten. I’ve heard other metaphors for excess and obsolete (E&O) inventory, such as bad cholesterol in the supply chain. However you choose to think of it, E&O isn’t good for your company’s health, whatever business you’re in. More »

• Segmented consensus

  Rich Becks, General Manager, High Technology, E2open - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - 0 Comments
  

  Why have we come so far so fast? With the rise of globalization and outsourcing, it has become increasingly difficult for single supply-chain companies to meet the requirements of all their major customers. Complexity and interdependence are unavoidable realities for modern supply chains, and adapting supply chain processes to meet these new realities is crucial for survival.  More »

• The sun never sets on today’s BOM

  Edward Toung, Vice President, Asia Pacific, E2open - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - 0 Comments
  

  A bill of materials (BOM) used to be a simple thing. A BOM is a list of the parts or components required to build a product. It provides the manufacturer’s part number (MPN) and the quantity needed for each component. At its most complex, a BOM is a multi-level document that provides build data for multiple sub-assemblies (products within products) and includes for each item the part number, approved manufacturers list (AML), mechanical characteristics, and a range of component descriptors...  More »

• Adapt or die: Our supply chains are learning the hard way

  Phil Kaminsky, Department Chair, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, University of California, Berkeley - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - 0 Comments
  

  If 2011 taught us anything, it’s that our supply chains need to be better prepared to deal with global disruptions. From my perspective, being better prepared means being more flexible—and that means having the systems and processes in place to sense and adapt quickly as environmental and market conditions shift. More »

• You can get more value from VMI, even with imperfect forecasts

  Rob Schoenthaler, Senior Vice President, Deployment, E2open - Thursday, December 15, 2011 - 0 Comments
  

  A recent article in Supply Chain Quarterly suggests that some consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers are cutting back on their use of vendor-managed inventory (VMI) because accurate demand forecasts, upon which VMI depends, have proven elusive. This isn’t completely shocking, given that effective forecast collaboration is a cornerstone of any VMI program.  More »

• Consumers seeking Black Friday tech deals may be disappointed this year

  Rich Becks, General Manager, High Technology, E2open - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - 0 Comments
  

  Today, the term "Black Friday" has evolved into an unofficial holiday nationwide, marking the start of the holiday shopping season. For those hoping to snag the newest, hottest tech toys this Black Friday and Cyber Monday, your best intentions may be thwarted by an act of nature thousands of miles away. More »

• Thailand floods threaten more than just “business as usual”…Is your supply chain ready?

  Andrew Atkinson, Director, Product Marketing, E2open - Thursday, November 03, 2011 - 0 Comments
  

  As I write this, Bangkok is still under several feet of water and several major Japanese auto manufacturers have had to cease production due to a lack of critical parts sourced from Thailand. Whatever else happens, the one thing you can count on is that there will always be some kind of trouble cropping up to disrupt normal business operations... More »

• Outsourcing: Are we ever going to stop?

  Rich Becks, General Manager, High Technology, E2open - Friday, August 26, 2011 - 0 Comments
  

  Last week I came across a fascinating column in the Economist that asked the very same question—can the outsourcing boom go on indefinitely? The article concluded that the business logic behind outsourcing remains compelling and that outsourcing will continue to grow. All around us we continue to see evidence of it, companies outsourcing more and more of their operations to specialized third parties: IT, Human Resources, clinical trials, accounting, training, promotions, manufacturing, distribution, warehousing…the list goes on.  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 »