
What do Beer and Bullwhips Have to do With Supply Chain Education?
Beer, Bullwhips, and Board games: Fancy Some Supply Chain Education? Have you ever played the Beer Game? It’s been around for years but is still one of the best ways to teach people about Supply chain, forecasting and the need for cross-functional...

Vertical Integration in the Supply Chain: Is it on the Rise?
Should Your Supply Chain Join the Vertical Integration Revival? Ever since the early 1970s supply chain organisations have taken on increasingly distributed structures, a shift from a long-standing tradition of vertical integration. Horizontal...

Supply Chain Leaders Insights in Melbourne and Sydney This October
Melbourne and Sydney: Two Cities to Visit for Supply Chain Insights If you're anywhere near Sydney or Melbourne this October and you want to a rare chance to gain some valuable supply chain leaders' insights, you're about to learn about an event you...

From Traditional to Fast Fashion Retail: The Supply Chain Transition
Can Traditional Apparel Retailers Really Graduate to Fast Fashion? While it might be premature to speculate that the traditional business model of fashion retail is dead in the water, it can't be denied that currently, as more and more apparel retailers shift...

Spotlight On: 3rd Party Warehousing Logistics
Insource or Outsource Your Warehousing? What's your Choice? Surely this is the age of third-party logistics! Some of the world's largest and fastest growing companies are major third party logistics firms (3PL). Many started as transport or shipping...

Getting Aligned with Business Goals for Successful Logistics Outsourcing
In today’s fast-moving logistics environment, the pressure is often on to achieve lower costs, faster delivery, and operational flexibility. Logistics outsourcing is frequently “sold” on the dollars and hours it saves a business compared to its in-house...

Collaboration at the Logistics Sharp End – Can It Work?
Why do some rival firms that battle with each other downstream in retail outlets manage to work well together upstream in their transport and warehousing? And by comparison and with apparently so much to gain, why do some logistics service providers and...

Logistics Disruption and the Changing Role of People
If you want to really disrupt an industry, aim for the things that define it. The older and the more embedded those things are, the more you can really shake the sector up. In logistics or the world of “trucks and sheds”, meaning shipping and warehousing,...

3 Things you Need to Know about Your Supply Chain (Plus an Extra One)
When I first published this post, it was called "3 Things You Need to Know about Your Supply Chain." However, I recently realised that I was omitting a fourth key factor that can contribute to supply chain glitches and gremlins. For those CEOs and other execs who...

An Introduction to Cost to Serve
Devil in the Detail A better understanding of supply chain cost dynamics can help companies recognise their profitable customers. Many companies fail to recognise the true profitability of their customers and product/service mix. Traditional reporting methods...