Flashback Friday; a Review of Popular Stories from the Past

17 Principles of Supply Chain Management Explained

There is scarcely anything that has not been covered in this amazing article, illustrating the brilliance of Anderson, Britt and Favre.

It’s a must-read for anyone associated with Supply Chain Management and certainly warrants archiving as a reference point to stimulate and refresh thinking in this regard.

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2How Does IKEA’s Inventory Management Supply Chain Strategy Really Work?

What are IKEA’s best-kept secrets behind its smooth back-end operations and efficient supply chain processes?

The world’s largest home furnishing retailer has 298 stores in 37 countries. It ranks Number 41 on Forbes’ esteemed World’s Most Valuable Brands list and took in 35.5 billion in sales in 2013. IKEA has certainly come a long way in its 60 years of business since its 1943 founding in Sweden.

This organization impresses not just its consumers with affordable, high-quality furniture, but also competitors and companies around the world – especially with its unique supply chain and inventory management techniques.

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3Is Apple’s Supply Chain Really the No. 1? A Case Study

Everything about Apple Inc is the talk of the town, for example, the new iPad, iPhone 5, Apple Map or even environmental and labor issues at its suppliers’ facilities.

Surprisingly, IT research firm Gartner ranks Apple Supply Chain as the best supply chain in the world for 3 years in a row.

Without a doubt, Apple Inc is the world leader in Innovation, Branding and Software Ecosystem. But, is Apple’s Supply Chain really the number 1?

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4Starbucks as an Example of the Value Chain Model

The business management concept of the value chain was introduced and described by Michael Porter in his popular book “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance” in 1985.

A value chain is a series of activities or processes which aims at creating and adding value to an article (product) at every step during the production process.

Businesses aim at enhancing their margins and thus work to change input into an output which is of a greater value than what it was at the time of entering the process (the difference between the two being the company’s profit margin).

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5Using SWOT Analysis to Prepare Your 2020 Supply Chain Technology Strategy

A good place to start developing your supply chain technology strategy is with a tool called a SWOT Analysis.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Here’s a simple example of a SWOT Analysis for Acme Corporation, a (fictional) mid-sized company that manufactures widgets:

Strengths: Acme has a solid position in its industry. They’re known for making quality products and have stable, long term relationships with many of their customers.
Weaknesses: Acme’s supply chain is not very agile. They’ve gotten complaints from suppliers about paying invoices too slowly. They have inventory gathering dust in the warehouse. And they have limited visibility to shipments coming in from suppliers or going out to customers.
Opportunities: Acme’s leaders know that new technologies could help them make improvements. But they don’t have a good understanding of how they work, how much they cost, or what it would take to implement them.
Threats: The Acme supply chain is vulnerable to all kinds of risks. Last year, a significant customer went bankrupt, leaving Acme with unusable inventory and unpaid receivables. And one of their suppliers suffered a fire, leading to a shortage of raw materials. There are lots of other risks that could emerge at any moment, and cause major challenges for Acme. From cyber-attacks to the threat of counterfeit products, to the potential for trade wars and port strikes. The list of threats is long!

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