BLOGS

If you are a supply chain leader whose company is on the road to digital transformation, you should make these three New Year’s resolutions.

In today’s business environment, supply chain companies must be able to respond rapidly and effectively to constant changes and complex challenges.

What if you could precisely predict when your machines and equipment will require maintenance – thereby preventing costly breakdowns, minimizing maintenance costs, and maximizing efficiency? With predictive maintenance tools and techniques, you can.

We speak with ICRON’s A. Tamer Ünal and CQM’s Jan van Doremalen, two trailblazers in the world of supply chain planning and optimization solutions, to get their thoughts on how supply chain trends and optimization technologies have evolved over the past 25 years and how they will change in the years to come.

Imagine the immense financial and operational benefits that your company could gain by making optimized business decisions.

The key to harnessing the power of new automated technologies is optimized planning and decision making.

A global financial crisis – when most companies are in cost-cutting mode – is actually a perfect time to invest in a supply chain optimization solution.

There's a disconnect between what supply chain companies’ data and plans are telling them to do and what they actually decide to do.

With algorithmic planning and decision making solutions, high-tech manufacturers can conquer the high costs and complexity in their industry.

To diagnose your supply chain planning problems and determine the right solution, you need a professional “supply chain doctor”

We explain how manufacturing firms can automatically, instantly transform their data into optimized decisions that enable them to achieve their business goals.

What are the key ingredients that supply chain companies need to make optimized business decisions?

Supply chain breakdowns can lead to sub-par delivery performance and customer satisfaction.

With an automated supply chain planning and optimization system, manufacturing companies can optimally plan for the holidays.

A growing number of companies are applying cutting-edge technologies to address critical inefficiencies and boost profitability.

Learn how supply chain optimization solutions can help companies conquer the complexity caused by unexpected events – such as the recent, record-setting global heat wave.

We explore some interesting opportunities for planning and operational optimization in the tire manufacturing industry.

Supply chain companies have come to expect the unexpected. Beyond the usual, unpredictable fluctuations in demand and supply, they must also cope with the unforeseen delays, disruptions, and even disasters that regularly occur in their end-to-end operations.

Many supply chain companies are not aware of the huge sums of money they are losing every day due to operational inefficiencies and manual planning processes. These flawed processes and practices lead to hidden, escalating costs that add up and take a tremendous toll on bottom lines.

I travel quite extensively for work and have had the opportunity to pass through airports all around the world. Although these airports have their own unique facilities, features, procedures, and processes, they all face many of the same challenges as they strive to ensure the smooth flow of traffic –  of both aircraft and people.

I have been working with supply chain companies for nearly two decades, and time and time again I see the same issue: companies are struggling to achieve integration of not only their technology, data, and plans, but also their people and processes.

Over the past decade, supply chain and information technology organizations have invested extensively in data collection and storage systems and schemes and have made great strides in terms of their data maturity.

These days, companies across almost every industry are looking for ways to optimize their operations – to do more with less, to do things more intelligently, and continuously improve their processes.

Outside of my business career, I’m an avid and accomplished competitive glider pilot. I am very serious about the sport of gliding, and have competed at the highest levels in the Dutch National circuit. As with many activities in life, I think it is possible to draw some interesting parallels between competitive gliding and business operations and extract some important lessons from the former, which we can apply to the latter.

Supply chain executives have a love-hate relationship with inventory. On the one hand, they want to keep stock to ensure they are able to always satisfy demand and avoid stock-outs. On the other hand, they want to minimize the amount of the stock they have as it ties up capital. This, I suppose, is the nature of inventory: you hate it, but you can’t live without it!

The Industry 4.0 era is upon us, and manufacturing companies around the globe are increasingly embracing automation and data exchange and implementing new technologies including cyber-physical systems, internet of things (IoT) devices, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robotics, and advanced data analytics.

In today’s hypercompetitive and highly complex business environment, companies are constantly searching for ways to gain competitive advantage by improving the speed, efficiency, and quality of the goods and services they deliver to customers through their supply chains. The key to unlocking ...

I recently saw a great video about eVTOLs or, in layman’s terms, an electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft. These self-driving passenger drones, which are capable of flying without a pilot, are built on blockchain technology. Blockchain?

Today’s supply chain companies have access to an overwhelming amount of data. Customer data, production data, GIS data, POS data, financial data, streaming data, and many other types of data are all collected – and this often results in data overload.

Energy is the lifeblood of companies in the manufacturing sector, the fuel that powers the production and delivery of their goods to customers. Without energy, manufacturing operations would come to an absolute standstill. For manufacturing firms, balancing energy supply and demand is a complex ...

Solvers: What are they and what role do they play in supply chain optimization? At its core, every supply chain planning and scheduling problem is essentially an optimization problem – as its solution lies in finding a way to optimize the flow and delivery of goods and services from supplier to customer.

The term big data probably sounds familiar to many people. After all, much is written and spoken about in the media and perhaps also in your organization. But what exactly it is, few people can give ...

Forecasting is predicting the future with the help of quantitative methods. Crucial for many organizations. Because, if you know what happens in the future, you can already respond to it.

A new year and a new budget. New opportunities to do better. But do we start well with our personnel planning? Or do we make a false start and are we already out of the lead at the beginning of the year?

When we think about supply chain operations, we think about a number of activities, such as purchasing, production, transportation, order shipment, or product delivery.

Wednesday December 13th 2017 ICRON participated in the 4th Supply Chain Management Conference in Istanbul. Approximately 100 senior managers working in the field of supply chain and/or production attended the conference.

Vacancies remain open for a long time. Figures from the global job site Indeed indicate that the number of vacancies in the logistics and transport sector increased by 30% between 2016 and 2017.

By nature people require oversight of information to base a decision on. How more data is available to use in your decision making process how more difficult your decision making will be if the oversight is not available. People tend to cross out information that ...

At the end of September 2017, the majority of world’s Supply Chain Executive leadership gathered in London. They attended inspirational speeches, .....

In today’s fast-paced and hypercompetitive business world, in the rush to produce goods and deliver services as quickly as possible, companies are often tripped up ..

A radical shift is echoing through Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) departments in verticals like Aerospace & Defense, Industrial Machinery and Equipment, Public Transport and ..

Benjamin Franklin, born on 17 January 1706, played an enormous role in America’s independence and the creation of the United States. He was also a talented writer, scientist, ..

Customized work, where a balance is struck between the interests of the employee and the employer, is the right choice for the future. In many cases the dominance of the eight-hour ..