“When your employees can’t see critical enterprise documents like invoices, customer agreements and product specifications while they are working in their CRM and ERP applications, they can feel like they are flying blind,” said Andy MacMillan, Oracle’s vice president, product management. “We realized that we needed to take a comprehensive approach to managing Enterprise Application Documents that would work both in the context of CRM applications that require flexible, ad hoc access to customer and product documents and with ERP applications that have high volume, transactional requirements.”

“We realized that just providing ad hoc or transactional support wouldn’t let our customers empower all their users and reap the productivity gains possible through a truly unified approach to Enterprise Application Documents,” added MacMillan.

Oracle’s Enterprise Application Documents approach is enabled by the integration of Oracle content management products, part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family, and Oracle Applications. With this integration, Oracle is providing its Applications’ customers with a set of content management services that makes all paper-based and electronic documents — including invoices, HR forms, product specifications and customer contracts — directly visible, searchable and manageable from within Oracle Applications.

1. Buffer stock is held in individual workstations to handle situations when the upstream workstation may be a little delayed in providing the next item for processing.

Sometimes, overproduction stock is there when the forecast does not match with actual sales.

2. Safety stock is held against process or machine failure in the hope that the failure can be repaired before the stock runs out.

3. Lot delay stock is held because a part of the process is designed to work on a batch basis whilst only processing items individually. Therefore each item of the lot must wait for the whole lot to be processed before moving to the next workstation.

4. Demand fluctuation stock is kept if the production is not flexible enough to keep up with the changes in demand. So, this stock is utilized when demand exceeds production capacity.

5. Changeover stock is held after a sub-process that has a long setup or change-over time. This stock is then used while that change-over is happening.

Whatever be the reason for holding these stocks, inventory management is very essential for any company. Also, stocks should be kept at minimum so that capital does not remain stuck up with excess inventory.

* An increase in outsourced manufacturing .
* Improved cost visibility across the organization
* Globalization of its supply chain.
* A move to a more demand-driven supply model with more accurate forecasting.

Among the specific strategies taken up by LG’s supply chain team are:

* Creation of 10 metrics across various areas to track progress and report to the CEO on them twice a year
* Standardize on one ERP system (Oracle)
* Standardize on one financial system
* Consolidate the various WMS/TMS instances
* Standardize RFPs and contract terms and conditions across the company
* Improve sales forecast accuracy from 30% in 2008 to its current level of 40% with the goal of 60%
* Make English the standard language across the company’s supply chain to facilitate better communication
* Standardize job titles in the supply chain
* Rationalize the more than 41,000 SKUs LG carried in 2008.

LG Electronics has been taking these steps with a goal of outsourcing more manufacturing as it moves from a mostly Asian manufacturer to a global consumer electronics giant.

For this, Plug Power will focus resources on its two commercial products, GenDrive(TM), a superior alternative to lead-acid batteries in the material handling market, and GenSys(R), a continuous-run prime power system that replaces diesel generators at remote telecommunication sites where the grid is non-existent or unreliable.

The Company’s presentation highlighted its plans to double shipments of their products each year from 2010 to 2012, equating to approximately 7,200 to 9,400 shipments at the end of 3 years which in turn would double the revenue over the same period.

In an attempt to attain its goal of profitability, Plug Power will try to lower product costs by leveraging the supply chain, lowering manufacturing costs and improving system reliability for both product lines. Key success factors include product expansion, starting with the release of the class-2 stand-up reach truck product for electric lift trucks in the fourth quarter of 2009.

“Plug Power has established a strategy to bring the Company to profitability,” said Plug Power’s CEO, Andy Marsh. “We have surveyed what it will take to sustain Plug Power into the future and have developed a thoughtful plan to engender success.”

The idea is to optimize the entire supply chain network by providing all the relevant information to every relevant company in the supply chain instead of companies seeking to sub optimize based on a local interest. This helps in improving the entire supply chain scenario with better planned overall production and distribution. This not only leads to cost reduction but also quality final product, thus increasing sales to the benefit of all the units involved. Thus the concept of competition between two companies fades and rather it is the betterment of a supply chain.

Thus, the main aim of supply chain management is to enable best utilization of resources like including distribution capacity, inventory and labor to fulfil the needs of the customer. In order to meet its objective of matching demand with supply with the minimal inventory, the SCM includes liaising with suppliers to eliminate bottlenecks; sourcing strategically to strike a balance between lowest material cost and transportation, implementing JIT (Just In Time) techniques to optimize manufacturing flow; maintaining the right mix and location of factories and warehouses to serve customer markets, and using location/allocation, vehicle routing analysis, dynamic programming and, of course, traditional logistics optimization to maximize the efficiency of the distribution side.

In making your initial sourcing and fulfillment decisions, certain risk items should be considered. These include political risks of the country, physical and geographic risks like availability and proximity of primary and alternative logistics networks for all modes, historic weather/natural disasters, labor union action and so on and also economic and market risks like fuel prices, currency exchange and inflation.

Ensure that there is efficient communication throughout the supply chain among the team members who are responsible for the decision making during a crisis.

Keep alternatives open. Use the services of multiple carriers at all times who use different ports of dispatch. Have the ability to diversify transportation. Transportation routes may be disrupted so it is important to have alternate means of transportation.

Keep a track of and constantly monitor each country/region for threats and trends which will impact your supply chain: Weather, port and transportation strikes, fuel prices, currency exchange, inflation, labor rates, pending legislation (i.e., trade sanctions, quotas, anti-dumping duties, Free Trade Programs), political elections that may alter the country’s view of trade.

Keep your supply chain flexible so that it not only has the capacity to keep up with a large increase in demand, but also that the pipeline can be slowed down in case of demand drop to avoid a build up of unnecessary inventory.

Have a solid cross-trained workforce that can react fast. If part of your supply chain is directly affected by the disaster, it is important to have people that can keep the operation running as best as possible.

Keep a backup of all trade-related documentation in electronic format somewhere offsite. If all records are lost in the actual site, they are easily and readily obtained from a different location.

Conduct a risk assessment of your existing supply chain. If you are uncertain as to how your supply chain will hold up in times of trouble, hire outside global trade experts to assess risk and help strengthen your supply chain.

These tips are very helpful in increasing the productivity of supply chains and making them more adaptive to changing times.

At present, the university is conducting a research project involving supply chain management and the project has been awarded a $225,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The project is entitled “Collaborative Research on Studies of Multichannel Opaque Service Enterprises.”

George Cai, assistant professor of management, has focused the research on the travel industry when using online retail outlets such as Priceline.com. This research focuses on building mathematical models to help suppliers and retailers determine pricing, channel distribution and revenue management.

A second part of the grant, totaling $225,000, has been given to Cai’s research partner, Xiuli Chao, professor of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan.

The grant is unique and novel in the sense that rarely a college of business administration gets funded by the National Science Foundation.

With the increasing pressure from markets, companies now need to accomplish greater results with fewer resources in less time. While honesty, integrity, timeliness and quality are still the basic pillars for any business, some principles can be outlined for accelerating Supply Chain Velocity.

1. Besides the unit price of materials and services, also consider factors such as the proximity of a provider to key locations, quality assurance processes, demonstrated past performance, contracted performance penalties, consistency of quality or reject rates, provisions for turnaround times, expediting fees and service-level standards. This will give you the benefit of total value instead of unit price.

2. When deciding to replace or enhance systems, instead of large and time taking implementations opt for quick-hit projects or low-hanging fruit. For larger projects, follow a plan which allows increment step by step instead of trying to do everything at once.

3. Increase Fulfillment Flexibility and Reduce Cycle Times by establishing fulfillment operations that are flexible and adaptable to meet changing market demands.

4. Manage your inventory wisely because stockouts represent lost opportunities, and excess inventory robs capital from productive possibilities.

5. Seek Out Smaller or Niche Vendors because smaller, lesser known suppliers can be more nimble and may be more willing to creatively meet your needs in a short timeframe.

These tips, though simple and basic, go a long run in increasing supply chain velocity, if followed and put into effect religiously.

Some of the main excerpts from the conference include:

H.J. Heinz Co. has developed a performance management program that links quality control practices like Lean and Six Sigma with best practices in manufacturing, supply chain management, and customer service. The worldwide initiative uses a formal communication methodology that’s customizable for different languages and cultures.

Lennox International, a manufacturer of heating and cooling systems, dealt with highly seasonal demand by using software to analyze the impact of inventory availability on customer service. The company achieved its goal of providing specified service levels at the lowest inventory cost, optimized by SKU for individual service locations.

To encourage continuous improvement, manufacturing conglomerate United Technologies has developed the “Achieving Competitive Excellence” (ACE) program, which certifies and rewards its own business units and its suppliers for excellence in service, supply chain management, and more. The company estimates that ACE adds more than $2 billion annually to its bottom line.

Now, TMW Systems, has announced a growing portfolio of fuel supply chain management applications designed to meet the unique needs of fuel supply chain operations for convenience stores and other retail gasoline and diesel outlets. The fuel supply chain applications from TMW manage more than 11,000 tanker trucks delivering fuel across North America.

TMW Fuel Supply Chain Transport Management System now offers eight powerful modules that can be purchased separately or as an integrated system which will serve the needs of diversified petroleum marketers, convenience store chains, vertically integrated oil companies and fleets dedicated to fuel transport.

“We brought TMW’s enterprise-class asset utilization technologies and their proven efficiencies to this high-touch, high-value service industry with several new applications designed to streamline fuel order management, improve order and replenishment forecasting and optimize driver shift-based scheduling for added productivity,” David Mook, COO and CTO of TMW Systems, said. “We knew that petroleum marketers and jobbers as well as oil companies could really benefit from these smart, cost-effective applications to manage inventory at dozens or even thousands of locations and to efficiently manage company trucks or contracted carriers in fulfilling orders in the very dynamic world of retail fuel supply.”