Industries > Retail | SupplyChainBrain

Retail: Page 518

A Real World Look at Recall Technology in Action

Red Prairie Icon

Focus Is on Return on Assets, Inventory Turns and Revenue Growth

Retailers are making a fundamental shift in the way they do business by creating value networks that coordinate processes and technology to understand, shape and respond more efficiently to consumer demand. Leading supply chain organizations recognize the link between responsive networks and improved supply chain performance.

01 09 cover 45

Tight Credit Markets? It's Time to Liberate Your Cash

Working capital optimization has always been the least expensive and most readily available form of cash. With tightening credit markets the option of liberating cash from a company's operational processes has moved to the forefront. Inventory optimization presents the second-largest opportunity among the working capital components after trade receivables and ahead of trade payables.

01 09 cover 36

Closed-Loop Strategies for Distributors and Manufacturers

Only 31 percent of organizations are looking at inventory management as a competitive differentiator versus the rest looking at it as a cost impactor. By adjusting the existing processes to configure a closed-loop inventory management process, organizations can gain significant improvement in customer service levels and reduced inventory carrying costs. The concept of closed-loop inventory management involves seven steps within the process: analyze demand, segment inventory, optimize inventory, replenish inventory, track inventory, manage events, and responsively execute.

01 09 cover 35

Responsibility as Strategic Advantage: The Maturing of Green

For those who maintain that companies have no business getting involved with responsibility-driven endeavors because, after all, "the business of business is business" there is often a lack of awareness of the business benefits-and practical imperatives-associated with responsibility-driven endeavors. Likewise, critics who point out that it is only for shameless cost or reputation-related motives that companies adopt responsibility-driven platforms often fail to acknowledge the many positive social and environmental outcomes even of initiatives with top or bottom line-driven goals. Case study interviews with firms of all sizes indicate that these critiques illuminate an outmoded way of understanding the social, economic, and environmental imperatives of this historic moment.

01 09 cover 17

It's Time for More Innovation in Green Supply Chain Management

To be honest, I'm a bit "greened out" at the moment. I feel like I did a few years ago, when RFID was all the rage. The first few months of RFID were exciting, learning about the technology and listening to executives at Walmart, Gillette (now P&G), and other early adopters talk about their ambitious plans. But as the months went by, there were fewer and fewer new developments to discuss or analyze. Every conference had the same set of speakers, and all the case studies (what few there were) started to sound the same. I think we've reached a similar plateau with green supply chain management.

01 09 cover 16

Will Pendulum Shift from Customer Service to Cost Reduction?

The elongation of the supply chain on both ends of the spectrum has resulted in a phenomenon where companies are able to compete at a global level for customers. Companies that were previously handicapped by lack of channel partners, high levels of investment in advertising and marketing are able to leverage the internet and compete with their larger competitors. In other words, globalization has resulted in increased customer centricity.

01 09 cover 15

Supply Chain Planning Trends for Consumer Goods Companies

Consumer products companies were early adopters of supply chain planning and supply chain execution. Most implementations are mature; yet in 2009, 24 percent of companies are considering switching supply chain planning vendors.

01 09 cover 13

Culture is Key: Sustaining the Business Eco-system

Corporate responsibility agendas revolve around a triple bottom line (TBL) framework geared to benefit: people, planet and profit. A great deal of business-focused, sustainability research emphasizes a transformation of business processes that support the goals of planet and profit and neglects the centrality of people in making it happen.

01 09 cover 10

Supply Chain Intelligence: Driving Business Performance Improvements

In today's global business environment, managing supply-chain-wide information effectively is becoming critical to business success. Today's multi-enterprise supply chains require the "intelligent enterprise" to make optimal decisions not only within its four walls but as it relates to managing supply chain partners and distribution networks. To make optimal decisions across end-to-end supply chains, executives and mid-level managers require actionable insights and intelligence on tactical and strategic levels.

01 09 cover 09

Isolate, Prioritize, Automate

There is a tendency to begin discussions of supply chain optimization from the perspective of available business process management software. But to attain real success, companies should base their technology choices on the ability to manage those issues that really matter. In other words, the real starting point requires isolation and prioritization of the most important needs and variables. [The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP]

01 09 cover 07

3PL Revenues Are Up Despite Recession

Despite an ongoing freight recession in 2008, third-party logistics service provider revenues grew an estimated 5.5 percent to $128.7bn.

01 09 cover 03

Page 518 of 602

Featured Product

Photo: iStock/Anastasiia Yanishevska

How a Leading U.S. Floral Distribution Company Reduced Warehouse Labor Costs by 45% with RFID

Recycled Tagging Fasteners: Small Changes Make a Big Impact

Mobile geolocation service for track delivery, cargo shipment and freight transportation. Logistic Import Export business (Elements of this image furnished by NASA)

Enhancing High-Value Electronics Shipment Security with Tive's Real-Time Tracking

Franchise business e-commerce online e-marketplace or digital marketing branch expansion for growth or use technology to analyze product consumer data website management plan for sale service concept.

Moving Robots Site-to-Site