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It's not every day that you see someone appointed to head up both information technology and the supply chain. But then, Danny Garst isn't exactly your everyday professional.
Large software vendors that once cared only about reeling in the big ones are discovering something the smaller WMS vendors have known all along: There's good fishing to be had among the small and medium-sized companies too.
In European DCs, bags of coffee and sugar are whipping out of highly automated storage and retrieval systems at a rate of 3,000 cases per hour. Is America next?
In the home computer market, a single return can vaporize all the profits from the sale. No wonder consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers are so intent on avoiding them.
There's more to conveyor performance than feet per minute. Smart users look for systems that can be installed quickly, are simple to maintain and stay up no matter what.
And the pouches, tubes and parcels while you're at it. DHL Express wants your domestic small package business. And it's willing to spend big bucks to get it.
It was less than a decade ago that the term "supply chain management" first appeared in the title of a CLM conference session. Since that time, the internal and external worlds of logistics have slowly but surely been converging.
Many times companies track their performance using traditional financial and operations reports gathered from their ERP and WMS systems. That's a mistake.
Managing a supply chain requires expertise in collaboration, cooperation and relationship building. But from where I stand, it seems that we simply don't treat each other very well.
With all the visionaries out there foretelling a future when businesses (and nations) collaborate in a seamless, well-oiled supply chain, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Transportation and Logistics have injected a badly needed dose of reality into the fantasy.