Whitepapers
Supply Chain Management & Optimization
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Secure and Resilient Supply Chain
Shippers face challenges in today’s competitive and regulated environment which require a responsive supply chain. Maneet Singh, Chief Information Officer of Odyssey Logistics highlights four key areas where shippers can fortify their supply chain operations. This approach can help ensure adaptability, sustainability, and compliance with emerging safety and ethical regulations while protecting supply chain integrity.
A Look at Supply Chain Operations with Danone and DHL
From Sustainability to Diversity and Inclusion: What to Expect for Supply Chains in 2023
A Roadmap for Navigating Supply Chain Issues
Today, the trucking industry grapples with both truck and driver shortages. In addition to the strain these shortages create for the economy at large, they also present problems for companies with commercial vehicles: vehicle downtime, profit losses, and additional parking costs. Download this how-to-guide to see how fleet owners and investors are transforming today’s challenges of the commercial vehicle industry into opportunities for innovation and new income streams.
5 Ways to Start Cutting Supply Chain Costs
The ultimate challenge for companies trying to remain competitive in a fast-paced distribution environment is being able to meet skyrocketing customer demands while reducing costs. That’s a tough ask, and often a seemingly insurmountable task. These heightened expectations may have you wondering: What do my competitors know about keeping supply chain costs down that I don’t? Find out by downloading this new guide. Learn five tried-and-true ways to cut your supply chain costs, and how the right warehouse management system can help you get started on the path to greater efficiency. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you can do with the right technology and the right mindset.
Optimize Your Supply Chain with Ocean Shipping Best Practices
Want to optimize your supply chain? Doing so can feel easier said than done. Shippabo’s eBook walks through ocean shipping best practices to help you get started. The eBook includes critical elements of a successful supply chain, eight tips for optimizing your supply chain, and answers to common shipping FAQs. Download it to optimize your supply chainís inventory turn and pre- planning capabilities.
Constantly Connected: How Cellular is Enabling the Digital Supply Chain
Supply chains grow more and more complex every day. Although there are many technology options when it comes to building a digital supply chain, one stands out as the most reliable and cost-effective: cellular. Cellular tools are the foundation of an effective digital supply chain, and the key to keeping managers constantly connected to their in-transit goods — from end to end. Download the white paper from Tive to learn more.
The Ultimate Guide to Being a Great 3PL Customer
Many shippers commoditize the services of third party logistics providers (3PLs), believing that the best result will come from micro-management and constant price pressure. In fact, the opposite is true. The more you, as the outsourcing company, invest in the relationship – as a partner, not an overseer – the more value is delivered. Here are 12 suggestions on 3PL relationship management that, while they create some work for you, pave the way for breakthrough supply chain performance.
The Internet of Things and the Modern Supply Chain
You have probably heard the term Internet of Things (IoT) quite a bit in the past year. It is frequently mentioned in the same breath as supply chain, with the common observation that it will significantly impact supply chain operations. This whitepaper clarifies what is meant by the IoT, and identifies some ways in which it is expected to, or already is, transforming supply chain operations. It also offers some suggestions on how to best leverage IoT opportunities in your business.
Turn Your Warehouse on its Head: Improve Productivity, Quality and Safety from the Ground Up
This whitepaper from the experts at Penske Logistics focuses on a bottom-up approach to successfully launching an effective labor management software program. It offers actionable steps for creating the right culture, phasing in the implementation, and ensuring benchmarks are met. Additionally, it cites an industry success story and lists six steps to assessing the efficiency of your warehouse.
Visibility, Speed and Agility: How M2M is Redefining the Supply Chain and Transportation
Transportation and supply chain management are critical pillars of global commerce and are facing unprecedented challenges and change. The new and original information in this study sheds light on how executives at transportation and supply chain management companies use or plan to use technology to address these issues and more. Key findings in the survey data reveal that “operational visibility” – knowing where a shipment is and monitoring the environmental conditions in near real-time of cargo in-transit – is becoming a critical tool for the supply chain and the transportation industries.
The Resiliency Challenge: Constructing the Agile Supply Chain for Heavy Industry
The engineering and manufacturing (E&M) industry’s supply chains are lagging up to 10 years behind other industries, having been slower to respond to changes in global industry. Those that delay in responding are risking critical damage to their market share from new and more innovative competitors and, ultimately, jeopardizing their bottom lines. This new whitepaper identifies the challenges and opportunities facing the E&M sector globally, and argues that E&M businesses must dramatically reevaluate their approach to supply chain management and effectively respond to their industry’s driving trends in order to remain competitive in today’s volatile business environment.
Illuminate Your External Supply Chain: A Digital Transformation Guide for Improved External Collaboration
Consumer packaged goods companies face mounting pressures on all sides, such as retailer demands, supply shortages, and consumer preference shifts. It’s no small feat to juggle these tremendous market forces while managing an external network of manufacturers and packagers. This guide outlines the benefits and rewards of a successful digital transformation strategy and the obstacles encountered along the way.
Stamping Out Rubber Stamping
Rate increases? Are you being overcharged? Is your contract letting you down? …Or is it your lack of an efficient process? These are just some of the questions most shippers or freight forwarders cannot answer precisely; instead, they are swag assumptions. Find out how you can take control of your contract and invoices to answer these questions definitively.
Why Your Supply Chain Is Brittle (and How Agile Networks Can Future-Proof Your Bottom Line)
The success of your brand will depend on how quickly you can pivot to both meet the needs of the new buyer and respond to global disruptions. Many CPG supply chain networks, however, are built upon rigid infrastructures whose inflexibility renders them vulnerable to external forces. The brittleness of these supply chains exposes them to avoidable risk and business costs.
Rethinking Pharma Supply Chain Resilience
The pandemic caused a whole host of issues for the pharmaceutical logistics and supply chain industry. For many logistics leaders, it is a crash course in crisis management and a stark warning of the need to build resilience. Learn how more than 100 directors of management from pharma companies worldwide increase visibility across their global supply chain and logistics partners through technology.
Rethink, Retool, Reinvent: Deepening Collaboration to Increase Responsiveness and Improve Service
Did you know less than 10% of companies invest in agility? The number one strategy for improving resilience and agility is to deepen collaborative relationships with key customers and suppliers, according to Gartner, and yet less than 10% of companies pursue agility investments in areas like collaboration. Find out how your company can stay nimble in this e-book.
2021 Magic Quadrant for Multienterprise Supply Chain Business Networks
Multienterprise supply chain business networks (MESCBNs) connect retailers and manufacturers with their industry business partners to drive digital transformation and supply chain resilience. The 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multienterprise Supply Chain Business Networks report provides a wide-angle view of the supply chain software market, helping business leaders better understand the strengths, challenges, and overall capabilities of key software vendors in the space. Get your complimentary copy today.
Optimize Your Supply Chain Strategy
Establishing an efficient supply chain and shipping strategy can sometimes seem like a never-ending battle. If you aren’t periodically evaluating your shipping and supply chain procedures, you could be losing potential business and overpaying for services. Download our e-book to learn what you could be doing to make the most of your supply chain and transportation budget.
Top 5 Supply Chain Planning Myths: Discover the New Governance Model to Defeat Disruption
Accelerate your own approach to supply chain planning and explore the benefits of concurrency with research from IDC, Supply Chain Insights, Texas Christian University professor Morgan Swink, and more in this new e-book. Plus, you’ll learn new techniques to increase your supply chain planning performance in 12 weeks or less. Start reading to learn more about how Kinaxis helps supply chain innovators drive a new era of planning.
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning Solutions
It’s time for change. Volatility and uncertainty demand quick action, your teams and your budget are overstretched, and another disruption could threaten the entire business. Turn to a trusted advisor for the solution. The Gartner 2021 Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning Solutions has recognized Kinaxis as a leader and positioned the company furthest on completeness of vision within that quadrant. Read the full report.
The Journey to Effective Supplier Collaboration
Effective supplier collaboration offers substantial opportunities to improve operational excellence and business growth, but it is imperative for supply chain leaders to lay out a framework for leveraging the partnerships within their networks. This research report, produced by Gartner and presented by Nulogy, outlines key activities that procurement professionals should follow to execute an effective supplier collaboration strategy. Download this report to form your own strategic framework for more effective supplier collaboration.
Analyzing U.S. Supply Chain Vulnerability and Mitigating Risk
The Biden Administration recently ordered a review of U.S. supply chains to prevent shortages, which have been exacerbated by COVID-19. This whitepaper analyzes the current situation to offer a perspective into what the Biden Administration’s review could reveal, and provides insights to all companies—not just U.S. businesses—on how to mitigate supply chain risk.
E-commerce Logistics
As e-commerce has accelerated, so have customers’ expectations. Many shoppers now expect the service they receive online to rival, or exceed, the in-store experience. To meet these growing demands, and to build a flourishing omnichannel e-commerce business, organizations must learn to master five main logistics capabilities.
2020 Hurricane Prepardeness Guide: It is Hurricane Season, is Your Supply Chain Ready?
Experts warn that 2020 will be the worst hurricane season in years. Every company has contingency plans for when things don’t go as expected. Whether it’s a backup supplier or a different carrier for when capacity gets tight. When the weather picks up, will your supply chain be ready to weather the storm? Be Prepared.
The Digital Transformation of the US Petrochemical Supply Chain
Get the latest scoop on the digital trends for petrochemical supply chains this 2020 and beyond, just download our full whitepaper for free here now.
Data, Data, Data: How do I harness it?
While every shipper understands the importance of data, supply chains can struggle to read and action the insights, even if the information lives in-house. Data management may seem simple, but there are pitfalls to avoid. If a shipper harnesses their data properly, the business can leverage metrics to optimize for reliable capacity and lower operational costs. Data, Data, Data: How do I harness it? will explore the magic of data analysis.
Improving Supply Chain Accuracy, Productivity, and Speed
Download this free white paper from Brother Mobile Solutions to discover one of the smartest & simplest ways to speed productivity. Explore the changing warehouse landscape. Then find out how next-gen barcode printing & labeling solutions can help small & mid-size businesses.
Logistics KnowledgeBase
Industry experts provide the information you need to drive transformative change.
Roadmap to Savings
Have you heard the one about the family who found $5,000 in coins hidden away in their couch? If only saving money in business were as easy as rummaging through overlooked areas and finding hidden caches of fortune. Actually, with a little creative thinking and refined analysis, your company can do just that. In this white paper, Optimum Expenditures Group LLC uses a specific case study to demonstrate how they were able to help one company save almost 20% off their freight spending budget by simply analyzing various aspects of their supply chainís transportation spending. By asking pointed questions and evaluating both obvious and hidden challenges, they were able to design a financial roadmap that was unique to this specific company. Download now to learn more and find out how Optimum can help you find extra savings.
How Supply Chain Design Leads to Successful Merger and Acquisition Activities
Consolidations across industries have forced companies to rethink their supply chains. Mergers and acquisitions come with a huge amount of risk, and by optimizing your current and future supply chain you will significantly reduce risk and provide a data-driven roadmap for success. By optimizing the current and future supply chain you will significantly reduce risk and provide a data-driven roadmap for success. Download this ebook to learn where you can leverage modeling across all stages and types of M&A activity including: pre-merger, post-merger, divestiture/spin-off, and brand/product line acquisition.
Logistics Network Analysis
Logistics network analysis gets beyond the marketing hype to see whatís really happening throughout your power-gen supply chain. A detailed look at your network and how each segment and carrier performs helps you identify opportunities for improvement and predict performance so you can mitigate potential problems. To learn how to save time and money in your supply chain, download our Logistics Network Analysis whitepaper.
Examination of On-Time Delivery Service in a JIT Environment
Adopting just-in-time (JIT) inventory principles has enhanced production operational efficiency, cost effectiveness and customer responsiveness for many organizations. But the real key to success is providing a solution that applies JIT principles to the specifics of each client’s industry and accurately tracks and delivers on-time performance, regardless of industry conditions, leading to the greatest competitive advantage.
A Leaner Supply Chain
Supply chains are inherently complex and interconnected. And the greater the number of products produced or destinations for goods, the greater the potential for complexity and the greater the necessity for systematic, enterprise-level approaches to preserve value for the company at every link in the supply chain. Download this whitepaper to discover how a more integrated supply chain can contribute value to your company.
Find the Money: How a Transportation Spend Diagram Can Help
Transportation leaders are constantly looking for ways to reduce costs while improving service levels as they conduct strategic assessments. Using the Spend Diagram to document freight flows and costs on a single page is the best way for a transportation team to collect data and focus their efforts. Read our white paper to learn how a Spend Diagram can identify savings opportunities throughout your transportation operations.
Ryder and FRAM: Filtering waste for the supply chain
Being the number one oil filter brand in America, FRAM knows having waste in your engine leads to poor performance. Being a supply chain logistics industry leader, Ryder knows having waste in your supply chain can also lead to poor performance. By collaborating with Ryder, FRAM was able to filter out waste from its supply chain, leading to more efficient processes and cost savings. The results include 100 percent productivity increase, 99.8 percent pick accuracy, and a seven-figure reduction in annual distribution costs.
Oil and Gas Transportation Mistakes and How to Correct Them
Historically, O&G companies’ soaring profits masked the poor state of logistics operations within their supply chains. Now that profits are thin, they’re rushing to save money wherever they can. O&G companies realize the savings potential in their disordered logistics processes, specifically in transportation management. Many businesses are making the same mistakes over and over, despite the fact that they can be easily avoided.
Global Forwarding: Biggest, Fastest Savings
It’s mission critical to optimize efficiencies and savings while moving freight around the world. Where can you get the biggest savings in international shipping with the least effort? Start here, by reading this new white paper detailing: How to get more use out of available space with cargo consolidation; How to estimate exposure and manage cargo risk; Why understanding Incoterms®, free trade agreements, and ACE may lead to savings and efficiency improvements, and more.
Examination of an Inbound Web Portal
Regardless of the size of a business, everyone is looking to save money and streamline processes. However, often companies overlook the cost of their supply chain, particularly their inbound transportation. Inbound web portals have the ability to bring several companies together in one place to share accurate and necessary information and provide an opportunity for business-to-business growth. Overall, each component of the supply chain—whether it is customers, 3PL providers, carriers or vendors—can reap the rewards of reduced costs, advanced visibility, improved reliability and increased savings.
A Quick Guide to High-Performing Partner Portals
Are your supply chain partners passionate about your partner portal? It’s essential that they are if you want to generate loyalty and increase sales. Your portal is the go-to source for most of your channel partner contact and information, so it needs to provide first-class support, tailoring partner experience to need, avoiding confusion and eliminating frustration. Download this quick guide, which provides best practices for building a successful partner portal.
8 Principles of Supply Chain Risk Management
It is impossible to completely eliminate risk from your supply chain, but you can minimize exposure to risk with careful planning, tools, and processes to anticipate and manage risk more effectively. This free whitepaper is an accumulation of experiences documented to help guide companies as they mature their supply chain risk management program and make changes to proactively respond to and minimize the impact of risk events. Download this whitepaper to gain new insights into supply chain risk management.
How Lean is Lean?
Lean quality improvement programs have driven billions of dollars’ worth of value across corporate supply chains. But, if you’re not careful, these programs can become weighed down with bureaucracy, adding time and cost to your quality improvement efforts. This eBook reviews practical ways to make sure Lean program management doesn’t get in the way of getting the work done.
Identifying Opportunities With Your Inbound Transportation
An efficient inbound transportation program can reduce costs, improve service, minimize delays, reduce confusion, and raise performance. Get the whitepaper today and learn where you can find savings and eliminate gaps in your inbound program.
Doing More with Less: Yard and Dock Management from an ROI Perspective
This whitepaper provides an important analysis for anyone faced with logistics challenges – high operational and labor costs, inefficient processes, security and more – in the yard or at the dock. Download this report to learn how integrated yard and dock management systems can help warehouses, manufacturers, retailers and distribution centers do more with less, while realizing a return on investment in as few as 12 to 24 months.
UPS B2B Purchasing Insights
Industrial distribution, once dominated by family-owned companies built on generations of personal relationships, has undergone a quiet but dramatic renaissance. Vendor reduction initiatives, widespread mergers and acquisitions, and the inevitable growth in online selling have intensified competition for available dollars. This whitepaper, conducted in partnership with research firm TNS, sheds light on factors driving the purchase decisions of those who buy or influence industrial supplies purchases. Touching on both current and intended purchase behaviors, the study offers distributors a glimpse into their competitive position in the marketplace, as well as potential areas for growth.
Building the Smarter Energy Supply Chain
This comprehensive whitepaper provides an overview on building a smarter supply chain in the energy sector. It urges logistics executives to rethink traditional energy supply chain models, and implement a highly integrated approach, before logistics drive up costs and destroy profit margins. The report – based on research by Lisa Harrington, associate director at the Supply Chain Management Center of the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland – advocates an orchestrated, data-driven, end-to-end supply chain model that increases visibility and reliability, and reduces costs and risk.
Digital Twin: Manufacturing Excellence Through a Virtual Factory
Download this whitepaper to learn how a new concept – a “digital twin” – can be used to improve the feedback loop from production back to design. Manufacturers embracing a digital twin strategy can accelerate innovation cycles – and better adjust to continuous process improvement – with greater ease and effectiveness.
Add Resilience to Supply Chains
Natural disasters and other events can disrupt connections between you, suppliers, and customers. You can circumvent disruptions or minimize their impact on the supply chain. This whitepaper explores which companies face the greatest risk for disruption, what supply chain mapping can reveal about risk, and how you can build resilience into your supply chain.
42 Principles of Forecasting
Forecasting is a thankless task. You’re always wrong, and your work is never done. Good forecasts aren’t always celebrated, but inaccurate forecasts will always be criticized. While poor forecasts deserve to be critiqued, good forecasts – or consistent improvements in forecast accuracy – equally deserve hosannas and rewards. This new e-book provides practical and actionable tips to help your company improve its forecasting process.
7 Key Business Drivers for Labeling in Your Global Supply Chain
In today’s fast-paced global economy, it’s critical to identify, understand, and measure how certain business drivers impact your supply chain and your company’s business growth. To do so, you must consider the critical role that labeling plays in meeting the demands of key business drivers. These drivers can have a significant influence and major impact on your business’ performance and overall success. Find out how Enterprise Labeling impacts seven key business drivers – regulatory and compliance, customer responsiveness, supply chain efficiency, business continuity, enterprise collaboration, configurability and segmentation, and brand consistency – resulting in improved performance and efficiency across a global supply chain.
Supply Chain’s New World Order
This whitepaper from One Network Enterprises offers a crash course in taking your supply chain from good to great by identifying the latest innovations that are impacting supply chains for the better. It also illustrates how companies can leverage the cloud for predictive and actionable supply network operations, integrated financial measurement, and integrated business planning.
Bending the Chain: The Surprising Challenge of Integrating Purchasing and Logistics
Over the last several decades, supply chain professionals have focused on performance issues that have emerged from a lack of commercial/business alignment with supply chain operations. While significant improvements have been made, the biggest SC opportunities have shifted. New University of Tennessee Global Supply Chain Institute research shows that a major strategic integration opportunity exists between purchasing and logistics, and failing to capitalize on this opportunity is clearly causing many firms to miss important opportunities to create value. This whitepaper presents strong evidence that organizations that align procurement and logistics decisions not only vertically with business unit strategy, but also horizontally between functions, enjoy heightened functional and financial performance.
Aligning Supply Chains with Business Strategy
Nearly 80 percent of respondents to a recent Tompkins Supply Chain Consortium survey believe that supply chain is an enabler of business strategy. Aligning Supply Chains with Business Strategy, a new report based on the survey findings, explores how companies can overcome alignment challenges to build stronger bridges.
Holistic Supply Chain Management: A Focused Approach to Supply Chain Management through the Lens of Working Capital Management
There’s been a renewal of interest in the past few years around optimizing working capital in the supply chain, and cloud technology makes it easier. Visibility on a cloud-based platform and having standardized, electronic documentation over the network gives managers the tools they need to free up as much cash as possible in the supply chain.
Evaluating Your Inbound Supply Chain
How is your supply chain performing? The inability to do the necessary supply chain analysis can have consequences, both financially and operationally. Smart companies follow a repeatable, consistent approach that determines whether a change can be implemented, and identifies the associated risks. Download Evaluating Your Inbound Supply Chain to discover our process for evaluating supply chains.
The Perfect Labor Management Storm – Steering Clear of Driver Hazards, Cost Damage, and Areas of Poor Visibility
Growing pressures including driver shortages, HOS regulations, and increasing competition are causing capacity shortages and escalating costs, cutting into already razor-thin profit margins. While some issues, such as weak economic recovery and rising fuel prices, are out of your control, labor is not. Discover how labor management solutions can help you optimize your labor resources by uncovering hidden capacity, consistently enforcing attendance and safety policies, improving hiring efficiency, and controlling costs to boost profit margins. Download this whitepaper today!