Industry Insights Supply Chain Management Sustainability

How procurement teams can navigate sustainability

By Jack Macfarlane, Founder and CEO, DeepStream Technologies Recent research published in the Harvard Business Review has shown a significant increase in consumer demand for sustainable practices, making sustainability a critical threshold for purchase decisions. It is now the minimum standard businesses must meet to show their commitment to the environment and secure client or

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Supply Chain Management

Why testing isn’t enough to prevent counterfeit components from entering the supply chain

Author: Victor Meijers, Senior Vice President, Electronic Components Industry Association Over 10 years ago, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report following the discovery of counterfeit electronic parts from China in the Air Force’s largest cargo plane, in assemblies intended for Special Operations helicopters, and in a Navy surveillance plane. In fact, they revealed

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Supply Chain Management

Economic Instability and Supply Chains

A major supply chain challenge is economic instability. We know that supply chain challenges can cause economic instability, but what about the other way around? What impact does economic volatility have on supply chains—especially over an extended period? Supply chain challenges have been back-to-back and overlapping. Even before COVID-19’s demand surge and constrained supply wreaked

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Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Health—2023

There’s an inherent disconnect when discussing “health” when systemic crisis is the new norm. In 2022 supply chain woes were rampant–from port blockage, rising inflation, slowing demand, the war in Ukraine, COVID lockdowns, elevated inventory, hurricanes, and even MIA employees. Although there were improvements in some of these issues, disruptions to supply chain operations will

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Digitalisation

ERP and SCM is all About Risk

Increasingly, businesses are discovering the internal benefits of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to manage business data, maximize systems and working processes while gaining substantial operational efficiency. Externally, Supply Chain Management (SCM) enables businesses to better interact with various suppliers and partners and access the raw materials and resources necessary to bring their products to market.

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Digitalisation

Machine Learning Already Optimizes Supply Chains

Doesn’t it seem that on some level machine learning is still “out there,” somewhere in the future like quantum computing? AI-based applications, machine-learning being one of them, are flooding in and supply chain is a beneficiary. Given the vast amounts of complex data supply chains create, machine learning is adept at analyzing the information, enhancing

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Supply Chain Management

Stop Messing Up Your Supply Chain! Avoid These Three Common Errors

Although there are many ways you can mess up your supply chain, here are three areas that, when sufficient attention is paid, will put you in a much better position. It is amazing that these items are not yet adopted universally. Not Using Available Data We’ve been inundated, virtually crushed, by the sheer amount of

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Supply Chain Management

5 Supply Chain Management Blunders

Fortunately, we have many tools today that help mitigate the inherent risk associated with supply chains. We can also learn from the past. Here are some classic examples of supply chain blunders that happened because of inept management decisions. 1. WebVan Whereas today, online grocer WebVan would likely have flourished, at the turn of the

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Supply Chain Management

When Supply Chains Go Wrong

Supply chains should be resilient. The reality, however, is that many can be sent into a dangerous tailspin at the slightest provocation. A tailspin that can be difficult to recover. We’ve seen examples of both resilience and tailspins throughout history, caused by natural disasters, wars, trade policies and politics, pandemics, and even former late-night TV

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Supply Chain Management

5 Ways to Make Your Supply Chain More Resilient in 2021

The world we live in today is very different from what it was a year ago. We’ve been forced to find new ways to safely work and interact with other people and within our environments. Many companies have had to alter the way they do business to remain effective and still be safe. When it

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