Expertise and analyst reports on a variety of supply chain optimization topics.

Avoiding The Common Pitfalls of SCM-ERP Integration

Creating an integrated SCM – ERP eco-system doesn’t have to be a costly and complex journey, if you choose a path that avoids common pitfalls. Some dangers are obvious, but others can remain hidden until they suddenly emerge to put the solution at risk.

Inventory Optimization Maturity Curve

Many years’ experience working with leading companies in dozens of industries has revealed a universal IO maturity curve that every organization traverses. It starts with a single SKU in a single location, builds to optimizing inventory across a single site, and ultimately creates a multi-echelon inventory optimization model that drives strategy to reach business goals. 

The Life Sciences Guide to Exceeding Expectations with Inventory Optimization

Good inventory optimization programs have transformed the supply chain performance and competitive position of leading life sciences companies, whose complex world is dominated by extreme service level requirements, multi-tier distribution networks, and a myriad of high- and low-volume SKUs. This whitepaper explores crucial contributors to inventory optimization success in life sciences organizations.

Avoiding The Pitfalls of SCM-SAP Integration

Organizations that rely on SCM software from their ERP vendor can find themselves waiting for the completion of all ERP roll-outs required to bring the entire supply chain into view. Logility and AdapChain, an SAP Certified Enterprise Systems Integration provider, deliver high-performance SAP-ERP to Voyager integrations in less time and at lower cost, while continually upgrading software components to maintain currency with data model updates over time.

The Practical Approach to S&OP

Leading supply chain teams have discovered that true S&OP success flows from practical thinking—making it easy to implement, easy to execute, and easy to sustain. Deloitte and Logility examine the do’s and don’ts of creating a practical, repeatable, step-by-step S&OP process that drives outstanding results.

Trouble with the (Size) Curve

Proportional profiles (also called distributions or “size curves”) parse an item’s demand forecast by attributes such as color, size, and more. These profiles are crucial to creating accurate demand plans at the SKU and sub-SKU level for new products introductions, as well as across the complete season or life cycle. Recent advances in demand planning technology automate the process, using sales histories to far surpass the accuracy of manually generated size curves.

Demand Planning Segmentation - Aberdeen

Based on a survey of 142 supply chain professionals across various industries, this Aberdeen report looks into where and why demand segmentation is typically utilized, and quantifies some of the benefits gained by companies that use it. 

Reaping the Rewards of Sub-SKU Forecasting

Automated attribute-based forecasting allows planners to work at a high level of aggregation that matches their business requirements, while using product attributes to allocate the forecast at the most detailed level. Proportional profile planning removes the pressure from sourcing and supply teams to generate SKU-level forecasts for attributes such as color and size. Instead, demand planners have the power to create accurate sub-SKU forecasts for any number of items using multiple tiers of attributes.

S&OP: A Critical Process for Superior Performance

As the speed of decision-making increases, so does the value of having an S&OP plan to monitor against in order to keep the organization informed and on track. While each company has its own set of circumstances, all should consider the gaps identified in this Aberdeen Group survey between S&OP leaders and laggards.

Four Pillars of Demand Planning Excellence

The four pillars of demand planning are: increase forecast accuracy by better perceiving and predicting the full range of factors that influence demand signals, disaggregate high-level forecasts into detailed plans for attributes such as style, color, size, configuration, etc., manage by exception using real-time alerts to focus planners’ attention on SKUs that deviate from expectations, and use collaboration techniques such as CPFR and VMI to share information with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders.

Better Planning Sweetens the Food Manufacturing Mix

Food manufacturers face common supply chain challenges such as lead times, demand uncertainty, excess inventory and manufacturing constraints—with unique added twists caused by factors like perishability, short shelf lives, and volatile commodity prices. "Better Planning Sweetens the Food Manufacturing Mix" asks seven revealing questions about how demand planning, manufacturing planning, and inventory optimization provide long-term visibility, efficient equipment utilization, faster inventory velocity and more.

Inventory Optimization: Impact of a Multi-Echelon Approach

Inventory optimization is a matter of right-sizing an organization's inventory investment to meet a given service target. The Aberdeen Group finds that companies utilizing multi-echelon inventory optimization (MEIO) have a more comprehensive understanding of their inventory and are twice as capable as others of balancing cost and service levels across their network.

Service Parts Management

Spare parts and services account for 8% of the annual gross domestic product in the United States, with consumers and businesses spending more than $700 billion each year on spare parts and services for previously purchased assets. The most common goals for service parts planning and optimization are to increase forecast accuracy for service parts, reduce excess spare parts inventory, reduce obsolete spare parts inventory, enhance scrapping programs, and increase service levels by increasing fill rates, product availability or up-time.

Updating the Wholesale Distribution Playbook

The Wholesale Distribution industry is faced with shrinking margins, growing costs, new competitors, and demanding customers. Leading wholesale distributors are using supply chain optimization to improve product availability, align inventory investments and deployments, control costs, minimize write-offs, and improve customer service. Supply chain ingredients that promote a winning game plan include accurately forecasting market demand, formalizing vendor-managed inventory consignment, reducing safety stock levels, and focusing on buying inventory when it’s needed.

Three Critical Components for Private Label Success

Private label manufacturing has evolved into a demanding discipline characterized by high service levels, thin margins, large SKU counts, and little room for error. "Three Critical Components for Private Label Success" shows how mid-sized manufacturers can grow robustly year over year if they master the art of customer collaboration and the science of demand planning, inventory optimization and production planning.

Winning the Inventory Battle in Consumer Electronics

In the electronics industry, product shelf lives are short and the greatest margin occurs during a successful product launch. But 50% of new product introductions fail to achieve success and almost half of those failures are due to initial misreads of market expectations. Why? "Winning the Inventory Battle in Consumer Electronics" looks at how the battle for profitability turns largely on two key disciplines: accurate demand planning and effective inventory optimization.

7 Methods that Improve Forecasting Accuracy

Smart supply chain planners use multiple forecasting methods tuned to perform well at different phases of the product life cycle. The key is to pick the most effective and flexible models, blend their best features, and shift between them as needed to keep forecast accuracy at its peak. This white paper looks at seven methods that have produced superior results for Logility’s many clients in a variety of industries and market conditions around the world.

5 Steps to Ensure Collaborative VMI Success

Today, we see the traditional data intensive VMI process merging with the best of Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) to form Collaborative VMI, a new process which shares more of the benefits across trading partners. This whitepaper examines how traditional VMI and CPFR have come together to form a more encompassing process that benefits all involved.

Successful Sales and Operations Planning in 5 Steps

The monthly S&OP meeting is a critically important decision-making activity that sets the overall direction for the company. This supply chain white paper discusses 5 critical steps to ensure a successful planning process that aligns with organizational goals.

6 Keys to Exceeding Expectations with Inventory Optimization Initiatives

This whitepaper examines the crucial factors you must get right to ensure your inventory optimization projects deliver outstanding results. This paper will help you identify how to gain critical executive support, understand what pitfalls to avoid and what to expect from an inventory optimization project.

4 Steps to Building a Branded Apparel Competitive Edge

Several key trends—such as increasing dominance of mass merchants, growing focus on private labels and the emergence of agile verticallyintegrated retailers—have pressured branded manufacturers and dramatically reshaped the industry. This white paper presents four steps to achieve improved planning at the store level, a greater ability to react to in-season replenishment signals and a streamlined sales and operations planning process.

What Every CFO Should Know About Inventory Optimization

CFOs strongly believe that good supply chain performance is vital to financial success. Studies show that a majority of CFOs believe the supply chain is directly linked to their ability to meet corporate objectives. Given that CFOs have varying levels of experience with inventory optimization (IO), this paper provides a few facts that every CFO should know.

Are All Products Created Equal? Utilizing Multiple Forecasting Methods to Increase Forecast Accuracy

Demand planning and forecasting serve as the centralized repository of intelligence for marshalling resources to cost-effectively respond to future demand. In order to ensure optimal demand forecasting, those in distribution-intensive industries must capitalize on using the most appropriate forecasting model and methods that best serve the unique dynamics of their business at a specific moment in time. All products are not created equal–nor are market dynamics static such that one model that fits today's conditions will be equally suitable tomorrow.

Five Inventory Core Competencies That Can Make or Break Your Competitive Advantage

Slower sales, longer supply chains, SKU proliferation, and higher obsolescence can hamper a company's ability to compete. To combat these and other supply chain challenges, best-in-class companies have turned to inventory optimization. Companies have realized hundreds of millions of dollars in documented savings through smarter inventory reductions without sacrificing sales revenue or missing customer commitments. This supply chain white paper addresses the 5 inventory core competencies you need to understand to stay ahead of the competition and free up working capital.

Aberdeen Integrated Transportation Management

Supply Chain Vendor Strategy: ERP or Best of Breed?

This paper provides readers an overview of the current business environment and the criticality of the supply chain given the business challenges of today.

Best Practices in S&OP: A Benchmark Report

Enterprises in the post millennium era have been severely challenged by a set of irreversible marketplace factors — including shrinking profit lifecycles, demand for personalized solutions, and the rise of the distributed network enterprise — that have transformed the global competitive environment into one with fundamentally more uncertainty and risk, but also one with great opportunity. These pressures have compelled companies to redefine winning business models, processes, and technologies and have catapulted the sales and operations planning process into the single most important tactical process to manage risk and profitability.

Best Practices in Transportation Management

Supply chain and transportation executives face intense pressure to deal with transportation rate and capacity challenges, as well as satisfy the increased thirst for transportation information from the rest of the organization. To identify today’s success strategies for transportation management, AberdeenGroup researched the domestic transportation practices of a variety of large and midsize companies. This investigation found that a number of companies have successfully transformed their transportation management operations to drive increased value for their businesses, while keeping cost and capacity issues in check.

Collaborative Transportation Management

Collaborative Transportation Management outlines the new application of collaboration in supply chain execution - Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM). This concept for CTM was presented to the CTM sub-committee at the VICS 2000 Conference and accepted as a working document for the sub-committee to define the emerging standard.

Demand Driven Inventory Management Strategies

Companies across a broad spectrum of manufacturing, distribution, and retail segments are striving to be more demand driven. The demand-driven strategy of allowing actual demand to pull inventory through the company and its supply chain seems simple. However for those using traditional supply chain management practices, other corporate strategies – along with some outside forces –make it a challenge to create a truly demand-driven supply and distribution network.

Demand Management Benchmark Report

More than 85% of all companies that have implemented a program to improve demand management have generated significant improvements in key customer facing performance. This report from the AberdeenGroup recommends that companies take certain actions to ensure they extract maximum value from their demand management initiatives.

Demand Management in Consumer Goods Industries

The consumer marketplace is becoming increasingly volatile, fragmented, and dynamic. These changes cry out for a process of dynamically assessing and managing demand. Shrinking product life cycles and an unforgiving marketplace are sharply increasing the costs of demand management errors.

Demand Management in Discrete Industries

Seventy percent (70%) of a total of 260 respondents to Aberdeen's survey on demand management practices in the discrete manufacturing space indicate that they have had a focused demand management program in place. In fact, 31% of companies indicate that they have had a program in place for more than four years. Aberdeen research finds that these companies need to refocus their attention towards order-to-delivery excellence as a driver for demand management rather than just concentrating on demand planning (statistical forecasting). Aspects that companies should focus on include external collaboration, customer level forecasting, and integration with order management.

Energy Cost Impact Brief

One year after the significant spike in energy prices, distribution and  manufacturing companies have had the opportunity to digest the pervasive impact  of high energy costs on their operations and margins. Overall, supply chain  executives remain very concerned about the impact of energy costs, and recognize  that the problem is not an aberration and will not go away on its own any time  soon.

Fuel Your Green Supply Chain: Optimizing Transportation Efficiencies

Supply Chain Sustainability initiatives are rapidly becoming a top priority at many companies as they seek to reduce supply chain costs with a new eco-conscious approach. Since these sustainability initiatives touch all areas of the supply chain, each company must evaluate the impact on costs and revenue growth within their specific global network. Transportation Management Systems offer the opportunity to achieve big savings and efficiency. An improved transportation management process enables companies to go green by reducing fuel consumption and lowering emissions.

Logility Inventory Management Solutions: A Fact Based Analysis

Logility Voyager Solutions is a software suite that provides demand planning, inventory planning and supply planning capabilities needed to manage inventory especially for distribution-centric businesses. A Logility customer base survey conducted by Aberdeen indicates a high degree of technology adoption and above average inventory performance benefits.

Technology Strategies for Inventory Management

This benchmark report from AberdeenGroup will provide insight on how to properly manage inventory to drive revenue and efficiency. With traditional inventory management practices being made obsolete by increasingly more global supply chains, contract manufacturing, more dynamic product lifecycles, and multi-channel distribution, inventory management processes and technologies are being actively re-evaluated by companies today. This report examines the latest technology strategies and practices for managing inventory to gain market share and competitive advantage through superior service and availability.

Inventory Optimization Technology Strategies for the Chief Supply Chain Officer

According to Aberdeen Group's, "Inventory Optimization Strategies for the Chief Supply Chain Officer," the key to managing the growing complexity of today's supply chains, reducing costs and improving customer service levels is the use of best-of-breed inventory optimization software. Nari Viswanathan, vice president and principal analyst, Aberdeen Group, found that best-in-class companies were five times more likely to use a best-of-breed solution for their multi-echelon inventory optimization initiative.

Logility Voyager Demand Planning Solution

Aberdeen recently researched demand management technology trends within consumer industries. This research brief assesses the performance of companies using Logility’s Voyager Demand Management solutions in comparison to the overall pool of benchmark respondents.

Managing A Bountiful Harvest

This paper examines how food manufacturers successfully plan for seasonal harvests, achieve long-term visibility of future demands and manage near-term production scheduling and execution.

The Responsive Supply Chain: Managing Market Events in the Consumer Goods Industry

Four Steps to Building a Branded Apparel Competitive Edge

Branded apparel manufacturers have faced severe pressures from new sources over the last few years, including mass merchants, retail private label brands and agile vertical retailers. Each one threatens to further erode prices and margins, while demanding faster sell-through as well as increased speed and flexibility.

To combat these new threats, branded manufacturers must adopt three core competencies that will help them to better plan assortments at the store level, understand in-season trends, and support in season replenishment and VMI.

Return on Relationship versus ROI

The 1970s were marked with management theories focused on Product Life Cycles. Companies were organized around how products were conceived, designed, tested, developed, approved, manufactured, sold, distributed and serviced. Theory was turned into practice, and companies finally had a handle on how products entered and exited the marketplace. With the realization that customers made up the "market," the 1980s ushered in a renewed focus on the customer and the focus on Product Life Cycles gave way to Customer Life Cycles.

Sales and Operations Planning

Economic volatility over the past several years has been illustrated by the highly unstable customer demand, raw material, fuel, and commodity prices. Most recently, it has intensified because of the global economic recession that began unfolding a few months ago. Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is the key integrated process that the supply chain organization (specifically the VP of Supply Chain) can leverage to achieve visibility and transformation across the entire organization and the value chain. The following study highlights the result of over 220 companies participating in a survey on S&OP related initiatives. The goal of this study is to compare and contrast the view points of supply chain and finance organizations relating to S&OP processes.

Sales and Operations Planning: A Journey That Is Worth The Effort

CGT partners with Logility, Inc. in order to take a look at S&OP in the CG industry.

Sales and Operations Planning Strategies for Managing Complexity within Global Supply Chains

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is the key integrated process that the supply chain organization can leverage to achieve visibility and transformation across the entire organization and throughout the value chain. This study highlights the results of over 196 companies participating in a survey on S&OP related initiatives. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of respondents indicate that improving top line revenue in 2010 is the top pressure driving attention and resources toward S&OP initiatives.

Secrets of Successful Global Sourcing

Global sourcing has become routine procedure in some industries, while it is an increasingly important competitive factor in many others. Effective global sourcing is becoming the predominant business imperative in these early years of the 21st century. 

Aberdeen Service Parts Management Update

Responding to shrinking product-based profit margins and pressure to deliver better customer service, companies are increasingly looking for ways to automate and control the flow of service parts to and from asset operators. While companies have traditionally put more emphasis on the planning of production parts, service-oriented companies are beginning to focus on the intelligent planning and management of spares to reduce excess costs, improve service contract compliance, increase customer loyalty, and offer a differentiated value proposition.

Aberdeen SOP Benchmark Report

This report determines the implications of S&OP business practices, application technologies, analytics, and organizational alignment on competitive performance. The success strategies and actions taken to overcome challenges by best-of-breed performers provide a benchmark for comparison and provide the reader with a fact-based case for action.

Supply Chain Digest Research Report: Supply Chain Execution Technology

Supply Chain Digest Research Report: Supply Chain Planning Technology

ERP providers have made aggressive efforts to attack the market for supply chain execution software applications, an area that has been dominated by “best of breed” providers. Supply Chain Digest has conducted a major study of ERP vs. best-of-breed in the supply chain execution market.

The Supply Chain Innovator's Technology Footprint

With globalization of supply and more customer-specific fulfillment mandates, the need for supply chain technology is not abating. However, in analyzing the plans of more than 200 enterprises, it is clear that supply chain executives are seeking new capabilities and technology features for their next-generation supply chain solutions. The classic internally focused, serial processes between supply chain planning and execution activities will become outmoded in the next generation of supply chain implementations. Companies that have yet to prioritize process automation with suppliers or customers or that don’t have a clear game plan for “sense and respond” capabilities that link real-time visibility with supply chain execution and planning should be put on notice.

Transportation Planning and Management for Operational and Bottom line Benefits

This paper discusses SAP pursuing further development of its transportation product to close the gap between the basic functionality currently offered and the extended capabilities found in best of breed transportation management sashes (TMS) offered by companies such as Logility.