... Amazon’s effort extends a trend exemplified by the likes of Instacart to employ app-enabled private contractors for last-mile delivery service to customers’ homes. Instacart pays its shoppers $10 per hour and presumes that tips will bring the effective rate closer to $15-20 per hour. Instacart’s grocery ...
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... see what lies ahead. Back in 2012, for instance, we correctly predicted changes in retail store operations, fulfilment centre design and direct-to-customer sales models. In 2013, we foresaw the impact of smart manufacturing and supply chain risk on the move to localised production. In 2014, we called ...
... anyone in particular and success generally meant following orders from above. No more. Today’s supply chain executive gets ahead by understanding customers, channels, networks and strategies – both within the company and when dealing with outsiders. The critical skills, in fact, are half old-school SCOR ...
... business strategy. Unmodified, this chart is a sleeper with lengthy names for business impact levers like “agility and speed in meeting individual customer’s fulfilment needs” and a rank order of importance that is pretty obvious. Simplified, however, it reads like a menu of weapons the CEO can apply to ...
... The natural trajectory of supply chain design is increasingly toward regional supply networks because of their proximity to customers. Shorter lead times and better customer service are more important than lower logistics costs and minimizing taxes, which again shows that supply chain strategy is more ...
... chain. Whether these experiments yield much profit today is really less important than what they could do for supply chains looking to win and hold customers with more than just a high-quality item on the shelf. As consumers, we are beginning to learn that expertise in the R&D departments behind our favourite ...
... declare victory with deals closed at the 11th hour only to give away margin on cost-to-serve. Service reps fall all over themselves “delighting” customers and in the process run up massive working capital bills with bulging spare parts inventory. Design engineers crave patents and critical acclaim, but ...
... supplier’s CEO in this case chose the low road, pressing for such outrageous terms that they were removed from the company’s approved vendor list. The customer paid dearly to qualify a new supplier and absorb the costs of transition in production rather than accept punitive terms under duress. Warring egos ...
... Wall Street) to renege on long-term promises in favour of short-term gain – a dynamic that played out between disk drive makers and some server customers following the Thailand floods in 2011. It happens to iron miners, shoemakers and truckers, and once it is lost trust is hard to rebuild. Building ...