The food and beverage industry continues to encounter new challenges and compound those already unique to their world. Fertilizer shortages, rising prices, and other disruptions amid higher demand and high growth have made supply chain planning more complex. To address…
Accurate demand forecasting is crucial to the success of any manufacturing company. It ensures companies have the right amount of stock and can respond promptly to changes in demand. In recent years, machine learning has become an essential component of…
Demand and supply planning was as much an art form as a science for many decades. The process was guided by human intuition, gut feeling, and experience and was aided by tools such as calculators and spreadsheets. These were all…
With increased global demand, shortages, significant disruption, and other challenges, businesses have never valued time more. But like other disciplines, traditional supply chain management has relied on disconnected supply chain components, manual processes, spreadsheets, and verbal agreements that take valuable…
Massive disruptions have been impacting businesses for the past several years. Gone are the days of stable and predictable supply chains that allow companies to adopt long-term lean and JIT replenishment to manage costs. To combat this new reality, supply…
Modern manufacturing operates successfully using software applications across a wide range of functions. These include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Material Requirements Planning (MRP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and more. Today, many of these platforms are designed to work with automation…
Recent disruptions such as trade wars and COVID-19 have caused many professionals within supply chain management to rethink and redesign many core SCM practices. With longer lead times and port congestions, these professionals have had to embrace buffer stocks, reshoring…
As a profession, supply chain management grew out of a collection of tasks required to source and secure materials for manufacturing and distribution. At first, purchasing, demand planning, scheduling, inventory management, and others were separate tasks, only loosely connected. As…
Inventory management and demand planning are considered important parts of the supply chain. Yet, many look at them as different and somewhat disconnected functions within supply chain management. In one view, demand planning is a forecast of what should or…
As supply chain issues reverberate around the globe, consumers are noticing shortages, lines, and long lead times on popular products. But for the demand and supply planners developing forecasts and schedules that drive the supply chain, this new reality is…