The belief that firms can be more efficient and effective when they concentrate on core activities and let specialist service providers take care of the rest has made outsourcing the provision of services a rapidly rising trend: from 2001 to 2009, the worldwide services outsourcing market grew from $65 billion to $110 billion, and it is forecasted to reach $130 billion by 2013. With this increasing reliance on third-party services, what can companies do to ensure that they receive high quality?
Innovation leads to growth. That is what 5 success stories in the logistics sector clearly demonstrate. Flanders will still be an attractive focal-point for logistics activities tomorrow. Certainly if we convert weaknesses into opportunities.
A review of research reveals that little has been done on the relation between Human Resource Management (HRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM). This is surprising, when you think about it, because the better people are managed within and between organisations in supply chain relationships the better the supply chain functions.
The Production Dice Game is a powerful learning exercise that demonstrates the impact of variability and dependency on throughput and work-in-process inventory. The insights obtained by playing the game can also be extended to a service or supply chain context. This article presents an overview of the dice game and the four extensions the authors have made to the game to reflect real-life characteristics more accurately.
Strategic alliances have become a common feature of supply chains, with managers of companies along the chain integrating their processes to enhance competitiveness. Yet research shows that alliances do not guarantee success – and little is known about why some strengthen the market position of the partners while others do not. Evelyne Vanpoucke and Ann Vereecke set out to understand which aspects of an alliance are more likely to deliver success. This article explores how behavioural features of an alliance – such as trust and commitment, and how partners communicate and manage the relationship – impact performance.
Conventional wisdom among practitioners holds that supply chain collaboration yields significant performance improvements. It is also what many text books on supply chain management preach. Some even consider it a prerequisite for future competitive performance: according to Poirier and Bauer (2001), “future success no longer belongs to a single firm ... The future belongs to networks of supply.” Two questions arise: How do we know when supply chain collaboration will lead to success? And how do we manage the relationship so that it turns into a successful one.
High Impact Low Probability Events This presentation will demonstrate that companies' fortunes in the face of business shocks depend more on choices made before the disruption than they do on actions taken in the midst of it. He shows that inve...
The financial crisis, triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, resulted in a spectacular dip in industrial production in 2009 and into 2010. However, over the same period, retail sales remained fairly constant. In this paper, the authors argue that the shockwave throughout the industrial world was caused by the inventory policy adopted by manufacturing companies: due to the de-stocking and re-stocking practices, real demand was distorted along the value chain. The authors urge close monitoring of, and insight into, the real state of consumer demand to ensure the sustainability of the current economic recovery.
Companies often wish to provide different levels of service to different classes of customers. Customer differentiated service levels may be motivated by differences in the perceived customer lifetime value or by specific contractual agreements that include service level guarantees. One way to provide differentiated service levels is to reserve a certain portion of the available inventory exclusively for certain classes of customers. In this article you will read more about inventory reservation and nested allocation as tools to improve your company performance.
As Western markets are starting to become saturated, companies are looking for new growth opportunities. Countries that used to be targeted for low-cost sourcing are now changing into attractive end markets thanks to their rising GDP and wages. Russia is one of these markets. However, its business environment differs from Western markets in many ways and poses specific challenges. This complicates a supply chain, because it not only needs to be globally managed but also adapted to local conditions. How can companies, entering the Russian market, overcome these challenges?