Blog Entries: Visibility

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 »
Don’t believe the hype! The truth about supply chain control towers

Sean Rollings, Vice President, Product Marketing, E2open - Thursday, March 08, 2012 - 0 Comments

There are a lot of people talking about supply chain control towers lately – but what’s all the hype? And are we all talking about the same thing to begin with? Probably not. It’s easy enough to slap a “control tower” label on a piece of software, but actually delivering a more agile, intelligent control structure is quite a different feat. More »
Tier 1 is just the tip of the iceberg

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

More and more, we're seeing supply chain technologies and capabilities that we were only able to "theorize" about a few years back. The ability to see and exchange information across multiple tiers of the trading network is one of these game-changing advancements. For industry-leading manufacturers and brand owners, tier-1 suppliers are just the tip of iceberg. More »
Bridging the gap between profitability and social responsibility

Rich Becks, General Manager, High Technology, E2open - Thursday, January 19, 2012 - 0 Comments

Apple controls one of the world’s top supply chains, which has been shrouded in secrecy for years—until now. The beloved consumer electronics company recently revealed the name of 156 companies that represent 97 percent of its supply chain. This is an unusual move for an industry that relies heavily on foreign component suppliers to drive margins, especially for Apple, a notoriously secretive company. 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 »
A short history of floods, quakes, and volcanic eruptions: Have we learned anything?

Edward Toung, Vice President, Asia Pacific, E2open - Thursday, December 08, 2011 - 0 Comments

2011 was hard-hit by natural disasters—but can we really afford to expect anything less for 2012 and beyond? A quick look at the recent past suggests that disruptions in the macro-environment are pretty much par for the course. And with today’s trading networks sprawling from China to India to Brazil and everywhere in between, it’s about time our supply chain organizations started thinking seriously about what it takes to drive resiliency into the equation. 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 »
Creating value: It’s more than penny pinching

Rob Schoenthaler, Senior Vice President, Deployment, E2open - Friday, October 14, 2011 - 0 Comments

In today’s marketplace, it’s no wonder that supply chain executives are talking a lot about cutting costs. And cutting costs is important, but I think that some of us have become so preoccupied with cost cutting and efficiency gains that we’ve forgotten what good supply chain management is all about: creating value. More »
What does the “E” in ERP mean to you?

Brent Proud, Program Director, E2open - Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 0 Comments

Jim Shepherd, a senior analyst at Gartner, in a recent blog post said that many companies in the retail, distribution, and manufacturing industries are struggling to manage their complex and dynamic global supply chains with ERP systems. These systems were intended to support the internal operations of a vertically integrated enterprise, which today has large components of outsourcing. The “enterprise” in ERP was definitely singular. More »