Day: April 29, 2021

A former student asked me: Would you recommend using Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) or Consignment Inventory (CI)?  I feel like VMI means that you have to regulate the Suppliers more than Consignment would. Consignment allows you to have your inventory costs in the hands of the supplier so the inventory cost is lower for you.  In other words, Consignment means we will buy the stuff from suppliers, but we will...

Have you heard about supply chain risk lately? ArcGIS is a technology that can help companies manage risk.  Note, nationally, almost zero SCM graduates will have this on their resume.Someone recently asked me about taking GEOG 3010 (our ArcGIS Pro class).  Pasted below is some feedback from previous students. GEOG 3010 provides you with a skill set that no other SCM student will ever have. Email from the course instructor:...

WHAT IS THE FORMULA FOR ROI? Answer: Return on Investment equals Profit margin * asset turnover rate. WHAT IS THE FORMULA FOR PROFIT MARGIN? Answer: (Sales – cost of sales)/Sales  or Net Income/Sales Answer: WHAT IS THE FORMULA FOR NET INCOME? Sales – Cost of Sales Do you know how to make ROI go up?  Do you know how to widen margins? Do you know how to increase asset turnover rate? ...

A great read on sourcing strategy with my field notes... Here is great read on Make or Buy that I wrote in grad school LOCAL VS. NATIONAL VS. INTERNATIONAL SOURCES?Most buyers prefer to patronize local sources whenever such action is prudent. A Stanford University research study found that approximately 3/4 of 152 buyers surveyed indicated a preference to buy from local sources whenever possible. Many of them were willing to...

A great read on sourcing strategy with my field notes... Here is strategic sourcing paper that I wrote in grad school WHICH COMPANY WOULD YOU CONSIDER TO BE MORE VERTICALLY INTEGRATED, GENERAL MOTORS OR TOYOTA? WHICH COMPANY WOULD YOU CONSIDER TO BE MORE “HOLLOW”, GENERAL MOTORS OR TOYOTA?  Potential answers, you could say something like: I consider GM to be more hollow than Toyota because GM tends to outsource the hard...

Notice how many more hours Americans work and how many fewer vacation days Americans have.  There must be both negative and positive consequences associated with that.  We always seem to over do it.  A world class job offer for ISM graduates traditionally will include 2 weeks paid vacation (10 business days).  In America, vacation time is negotiable but most companies provide vacation time based on seniority (how long you have...

MOST FIRMS WILL CONTINUE TO REDUCE THE TOTAL NUMBER OF SUPPLIERS THEY MAINTAIN, AND THE REDUCTION WILL CONTINUE TO BE AS DRAMATIC AS THEY HAVE BEEN IN THE LAST 8 TO 10 YEARS. TRUE OR FALSE. False.  Yes, the companies that recruit from the supply chain programs have long been on an aggressive outsourcing strategy.  Over the last 30 years, they keep outsourcing more and more of their material needs to a...

Please read below.  Basically, the dollar value output of U.S. manufactured goods is at an all-time high.  The problem is that American manufacturing keeps employing fewer and fewer people. That is because American manufacturing is the most productive in the world (measured by dollar value of output generated per worker per hour).   Much of those productivity gains come from what you are majoring in, supply chain management.  While the jobs...

We will talk about potential "disruptive" technologies in class such as 3D printing, the hydrogen powered fuel cell, the Internet of Things, the Cloud, RFID/Smart tags rather than bar code labeling, electronic reverse auctioning, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation, autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, etc.  The less glamorous disruption might come from WMU (see below).  Will your employer even know about this technology?  If not, could you be...

Visualization is big.   Kellogg's is the largest user of Tableau in Michigan and Tableau is owned by Salesforce.  Salesforce is huge and is worth $220B.  PowerBI  is owned by Microsoft which is even huger than Salesforce and MSFT is worth almost $2,000,000,000,000 - that is $2 Trillion.  PowerBI (MSFT) is playing catch-up but making significant strides.  Tableau is the real deal.  But so is Power BI.  Students ask me which...