By Mac Cutchins on
10/15/2008 9:31 AM
In the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs (in print but not on the 'net - http://foreignaffairs.org - as of this writing) Marc Levinson (economist and author of The Box, How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger), pens "Freight Pain" the subtitle of which is:
Even as Americans lame ...
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By Mac Cutchins on
10/9/2008 11:28 PM
For many businesses, when revenues are increasing substantially over time, a multitude of sins can be covered. When revenues stabilize or are reduced, the pain of operating costs that are too high can be acutely felt.
In todays climate, when we already know that CEOs are acutely aware of the need to increase operational efficiency, as well as the fact that supply chain risk is perceived as rising but that companies
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By Mac Cutchins on
9/24/2008 11:39 PM
We know it's risky - and potentially boring - to do math in public. But, sometimes it's really important in understanding key concepts in supply chain.
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By Mac Cutchins on
9/16/2008 10:31 PM
As mortgage tranches deteriorate and we observe the unwinding derivatives dance, it's perhaps easy to note that, for now, it is the financial sector that is in dire straits and we hope that commerce will remain relatively unscathed.
But all's not well with infrastructure.
No matter our political persuasion, we all agree that an appropriate use of tax dollars is in our transportation infrastructure. This month, Clifford Lynch, in DC Velocity points out - with a very good summary capture of the last 70 years or so - just how antiquated and poor our transportation infrastructure is ...
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By Mac Cutchins on
9/10/2008 6:30 AM
There is a movement in supply chain consutling, driven by good results in some industry settings, for corporate strategy to explicitely choose to reduce complexity in their enterprises: reduce their number of SKUs, reduce the markets they participate in, reduce their number of vendors, even reduce their customer count!
Why? Because many enterprises cannot manage complexity - and most often, explicitely in supply chain. Recently Dan Gilmore at Supply Chain Digest, catalogs some of the basis of the 'War on Supply Chain Complexity'.
We grant that there have b ...
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By Mac Cutchins on
9/9/2008 3:23 PM
I mentioned in the last post that the Japanese don't mind having multiple handling steps in a material automation process. Perhaps, to make up for that, or because of the fixation the Japanese have for anthropomorphic robots - they suggest that a robot can perform those 'manual' handling steps (right click on the movie below and select 'Play' to see the Motoman in action)...
You have to love it - but th ...
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By Mac Cutchins on
9/8/2008 2:05 AM
We're attending and have some partner meetings at Logis-Tech Tokyo (sort of the ProMat of Japan) this week.
This show is held at Big Sight in the south Tokyo area (and I've often wondered if there's a misconception in the name between sight and site) but it is without a doubt a very big sight. The exhibition halls here are as large as any metropolitan city in the US - and probably larger.
As is usually the ...
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By Mac Cutchins on
9/5/2008 4:31 AM
This is a corporate blog - not a political one. But public policy - in the context of positive business impact - is germaine to our focus on competitive advantage in general and supply chain efficiency in particular.
Victor Hugo observed (what has become perhaps cliché) that "nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come". Even though cliché, it is nonetheless true.
An idea whose time has come is the FairTax proposal - as embodied in the US House of Representatives HR 25 and the US Senate S 1025 (for the current legislative sessions). It's a bold, non-partisan proposal - eliminating the IRS, income tax, payroll tax, capital gains - ac ...
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By Mac Cutchins on
9/4/2008 1:31 AM
As long as we are contemplating supply chain challenges, here's some news from Managing Automation (registration required):
Here's the problem with supply chain management (SCM) software in a nutshell: The more you spend to fix the problems with your supply chain, the more you realize how many more problems you actually have. This paradox is fueling interest in the supply chain as never before.
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By Mac Cutchins on
9/2/2008 9:31 PM
The seminal McKinsey Quarterly provides the results of its recent supply chain global survey. (Registration required.)
The survey, which was conducted in June of this year with responses from 273 CEOs worldwide, opens with:
A McKinsey Quarterly survey finds that supply chain risk is rising sharply. However, supply chain management isn’t keeping pace: most respondents say that their companies aren’t meeting strategic goals for ...
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