Supply Chain Reaction

Toyota's Supply Chain: the Bigger they are...

2009-11-25T08:58:33-05:00

...the Harder they fall. One wonders whether this truism applies to Toyota, the world's number 1 automaker. For decades Toyota has been a paragon of manufacturing and supply chain excellence. Quality as a cost saver rather than an added expense...

Sustainable Supply Chains and the Post-Industrial World

2009-11-24T08:39:54-05:00

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a supply chain executive from one of the big Hollywood Studios about sustainability strategies in their industry. Yes, they got the memo that Wal-Mart is gearing up to demand environmental and social impact...

Recovery Rising: Why and How

2009-11-23T08:04:29-05:00

Latest numbers out of Europe show growth in manufacturing, so says the euro-version of the Purchasing Managers Index. Obviously, stock markets are moving haltingly forward suggesting investors see an upside in corporate profits. The question is why and how is...

Lean and green: sustainability and the healthcare value chain

2009-11-17T07:39:41-05:00

First off, sorry for the six week hiatus - not exactly blog protocol, I know, but alot has been happening back here on earth keeping me away from the blogosphere. Earth, by the way, is the theme of this post...

Dueling Benefits: Safety vs. Efficiency

2009-10-01T10:44:14-04:00

This morning I saw a TV news item on the push to outlaw in-cab computers for truck drivers out of safety concerns due to distracted drivers. My first thought: ridiculous! These guys are professionals, and I would wager, are far...

Green IT is a Red Herring

2009-09-04T11:53:05-04:00

For all the noise we hear about green IT you'd think the whole climate change problem is just a few sustainable data centers away from resolution. Google "Green IT" and get over 6 million hits - Google "Green Manufacturing" and...

Chinese Emissions Flat by 2050? I hope so!

2009-08-17T12:02:18-04:00

The FT has a short front page story today quoting Su Wei of China's National Development and Reform Commission saying "China's emissions will not continue to rise beyond 2050". This remarkably unambitious goal is a sandbaggers delight. Forget about the...

Healthcare Hydra - Insurance is the Heart of the Problem

2009-08-14T08:34:44-04:00

As Obama and company tussle with the beast of healthcare reform I am reminded of the myth of the Hydra who grows three new heads each time one is cut off. Each piece of the administration's plan as summarized on...

No Way Around Carbon in the Supply Chain

2009-07-28T08:57:58-04:00

Today's Financial Times has a piece by Joshua Chaffin that details the story on carbon capture and storage (CCS) which is a new technology for cleaning coal fire emissions so thoroughly that the CO2 can be used in softdrinks. The...

Playing Hot Potato with Carbon in the Global Supply Chain

2009-07-21T07:55:52-04:00

Hilary Clinton's visit to India included a sturdy rebuff from Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh on the idea of accepting specific targets for carbon emissions. His point, which sure sounds fair from the perspective of a developing nation working its way...

Wal-Mart's Green Ratings: Supply Chain Finally Beats Marketing

2009-07-16T10:25:17-04:00

Wal-Mart's blockbuster announcement - featured front page in today's WSJ - that ALL suppliers will eventually need to provide environmental impact labeling for ALL of their products means Sustainable Supply Chain is moving ahead of symbolic marketing in the quest...

Sustainable Logistics Starts with the Obvious: Fuel Efficiency

2009-07-16T08:30:53-04:00

From Awareness to Execution Sustainability is finally moving from its Awareness phase as dominated by the likes of Greenpeace and into its Execution phase where real people in real jobs will have to regularly manage environmental impacts. In a recent...

What's Missing from The Supply Chain Top 25?

2009-07-10T14:54:47-04:00

Customer service metrics, that's what. I had a pretty pointed email from Scott Brown at Plexus the other day offering a suggestion for addressing this gap. He wrote: "As a last step require each company that has a shot to...

Best Supply Chain University Programs - No Ivy

2009-06-17T08:00:49-04:00

My colleague David Aquino has just published a study of the best University Supply Chain programs in the U.S. and while I really respect the rigor of the methodology I wish my school, Stanford, had made the list. More pointedly,...

Engine of Recovery: the Third World

2009-06-08T07:48:42-04:00

Last Thursday the New York Times Business Section featured a piece entitled "Developing Markets in Bloom Again" which reported stock markets in India, Brazil and China up by 64%, 41%, and 37% respectively over the past three months. The article's...

Taming Complexity in the Global Supply Chain: HP's Story

2009-05-28T18:21:00-04:00

HP manages one of the most complex and truly global supply chains out there. The $118B company serves nearly every country in the world manufacturing and sourcing from every corner. And at the heart of that is Tony Prophet, senior...

Delivering on Brand Promise in a Content Economy: Kraft Foods

2009-05-28T16:28:53-04:00

Kraft Foods is a $42B consumer goods company with nearly 60 brands with such household names as Oreo, Oscar Mayer, A1, and Ritz. For Kraft, today's realities have created a unique opportunity to reinvent its supply chain around a faster...

Manufacturing in the Content Economy: Samsung's Challenge

2009-05-28T15:44:50-04:00

Samsung Electronics seems far removed from the content economy, but it's anything but. Content is invading nearly every aspect of products and manufacturing these days. As a maker of mobile phones, televisions, camcorders, Blu-Ray players, appliances and other electronic devices,...

Welcome to the Content Economy

2009-05-28T13:40:12-04:00

AMR Research kicked off its 2009 Supply Chain Executive Conference, last night, with the unveiling of our 2009 Supply Chain Top 25. You won't find a whole lot of surprises on this year's list with just some small movement among...

The Obama Effect

2009-05-16T09:37:42-04:00

We had a research leadership meeting the other day, and, in response to a request from Safeway, decided to outline a set of questions surrounding the implications of President Obama's ambitious policies for supply chain professionals. The outline, which is...

735 Idle Ships Off Singapore: The Economy of Abundance

2009-05-14T09:00:10-04:00

Yesterday's NYTimes has an article about the massive amount of ocean shipping capacity sitting idle off Singapore. Apparently daily rates for a bulk freighter are down from $300,000 last summer to $10,000 earlier this year. The cause is a massive...

China's IP Crimes Come Back to Haunt Them

2009-05-12T11:53:56-04:00

Our quarterly risk data is in again and the topic of intellectual property risk continues to grow as a concern for supply chain strategists looking to China for sourcing and manufacturing. Not only was IP infringement risk highest by a...

Thumbs Up to Smurfit & Stone's Little Green Step Forward

2009-05-12T11:13:49-04:00

Out here at the end of the supply chain consumers like me are trying to be green. One virtuous practice I perform is breaking down corrugated cardboard boxes to make the recycling pickup easier. A longstanding bitch I have with...

IT is Shaking up the Educational Supply Chain Too

2009-05-04T09:23:55-04:00

Last week I met a fellow named Ross Mitchell who had just won a major decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court allowing him to sit for the Massachusetts Bar exam, despite having attended law school at an institution not approved...

Stolen IP in China: The Piper will get Paid

2009-04-28T12:15:37-04:00

As everyone knows, and as our quarterly supply chain risk data proves, China is a den of thieves as far as IP is concerned. Today's New York Times has a lengthy and prominent article on brand piracy in Shenzhen's cell...

My Exploding Brain and the Growth Platform that only Apple Gets

2009-04-23T09:43:02-04:00

OK. I write lots of impassioned stuff about the need to master the content economy and the mega-growth platform of intellectual property. Today my brain nearly exploded as I read the New York Times pages B2 and B3. On B2...

The Women of Supply Chain

2009-04-21T16:09:36-04:00

I was just reading Lora Cecere's most recent piece on arsonists in the supply chain and thought - wow, great piece. First off Lora takes some hard macro data about how deep the dropoff has been in demand to set...

Consolidation and Death: Where is Supply Chain Collaboration?

2009-04-16T08:45:10-04:00

A decade ago the idea of collaboration was emerging as a breakthrough approach to efficiency beyond the factory. The B2B air in the internet bubble came from notions like "Collaborative Commerce" coined by Gartner which implied that electronic connectivity would...

The Next Big Land Rush: Believe or Not, Its Knowledge Management

2009-04-10T11:36:05-04:00

This sounds silly for anyone who has ever been involved in the typical hapless library exercise of a digital “knowledge management” initiative. The lasting image for most of these efforts is of a black hole - everything goes in, nothing...

Supply Chain Top 25: You Decide

2009-04-07T14:39:51-04:00

We publish the AMR Supply Chain Top 25 annually, and have since 2004. People follow it because it forces the discussion of who runs the best supply chain by focusing on big, familiar companies we all know. The methodology is...

Sun and IBM Breaking Up: Who Wins?

2009-04-06T12:48:31-04:00

The news today about IBM and Sun possibly going separate ways leaves a door open for others to dodge what could have been a pretty blockbuster combination. I remember back in late 90's how cool Java was and what it...

Metro and the Digital Download Race

2009-03-27T14:15:29-04:00

I spoke at a conference in London this week and had a question from Mark Halper with Manufacturing Executive magazine about how companies other than Apple could play in the content economy. I rattled off my favorite examples of content...

The Global Supply Chain: Accelerating Recession and Recovery

2009-03-25T16:29:36-04:00

I’ve been on the road for the past week and a half, but last Friday I had an interesting e-mail conversation with Jim Shepherd, an SVP at AMR Research, on the how the global supply chain affected the downturn, and...

Supply Chain Can’t Save the World If It’s Not Allowed to Serve the World

2009-03-23T16:50:06-04:00

I’ve said that supply chain is the answer to some of our really deep problems like environmental sustainability, affordable healthcare provisioning, and developing world welfare. Today, with a total freeze on world consumer demand, this is more important than ever....

JCI in the Driver's Seat

2009-03-17T11:54:46-04:00

Despite the dismal state of the auto industry, here’s a story about how Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) is still innovating, trying to revolutionize the plug-in hybrid car market. One of the reasons JCI consistently makes our Supply Chain Top 25...

Supply Chain Degree Programs: What Works?

2009-03-13T15:06:28-04:00

I wrote a piece the other day about where the jobs will be in 2010. It ended up being the most-read article on the University of Massachusetts’ LinkedIn site (much to my surprise since I didn’t post it there). I...

Where the Jobs are At: 2010

2009-03-09T13:01:19-04:00

If 2008 is the year we hit the wall, then 2010 is the year we start to show our resilience and see the light at the end of the tunnel. The big hook in Thomas Friedman’s March 7th column is...

Cydia and Apple: Lawsuits Will Be a Sideshow

2009-03-06T10:24:52-05:00

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a big article about a new renegade competitor that is challenging Apple’s App Store and in the process whetting the appetites of IP lawyers. With all due respect to the legal eagles involved, technology and...

Categorizing Content in the Supply Chain

2009-03-03T11:33:45-05:00

The Intellectual Property theme for our upcoming supply chain conference is generating an explosion of ideas, but an even bigger explosion of questions. Everyone, it seems, gets the basic idea that content, or IP, is important to their supply chain...

Tesco's US Fresh & Easy Launch Not so Easy

2009-02-25T11:21:12-05:00

I lived in England for four years and was very impressed by the basic Tesco supermarket offering. Lessons learned with Tesco's Fresh & Easy launch in the US suggest the perennial Supply Chain Top 25 grocer is not quite as...

Atoms and Ideas: Supply Chains Adapt to Make Money from IP

2009-02-23T19:09:53-05:00

A recent BusinessWeek article caught my eye as we plan for our upcoming conference on intellectual property, or content, and the global supply chain. As I seem to see on a daily basis, almost all industries are struggling with the...

The Dawning of a New Economy: Nokia Makes Another Move

2009-02-18T12:35:46-05:00

The timing of this week’s Chain Reaction column (subscribe here) couldn’t have been better. After discussing the dawning of a new economy based on intellectual property, we now get news Nokia is moving further into that realm, opening an app...

Peanut Recall and Supply Chain Worries: China as Bad Guy (again); HP as Good Guy

2009-02-12T13:47:38-05:00

As the Peanut Corp. of America scandal rolls on a new bit of information has thickened the plot: Chinese organic peanuts may have been the source of another Salmonella outbreak at PCA back in 2006. The last post I made...

Video: Kevin O'Marah's Interview with Dana Stiffler

2009-02-11T12:29:43-05:00

Intel, Blip.tv, and GM: The New World of Work in the Content Economy

2009-02-11T11:31:49-05:00

The story of our wacky upside down economy plays out in three columns spanning page 2B and 2C of USA Today (Feb 11, 1009). It tells me that the next generation of work may feel more like play. First, I...

Peanut Recall: Another Supply Chain Risk to Consider

2009-02-10T10:03:13-05:00

The big story on food safety—USA Today has it on page 1, above the fold—reminds us again that supply chain risk is a multi-headed beast. That Peanut Corp. of America knowingly shipped contaminated product is criminal, but the wider issue...

Apple without Jobs – No Problem for at Least the Near Future

2009-02-09T13:52:05-05:00

PC magazine just posted a thoughtful article by Tim Bajarin that says Apple’s idea pipeline is far from empty and that Steve Jobs’ absence should not mean an end anytime soon to its track record of breakthrough products. We have...

ISM: Recession or Recovery

2009-02-02T16:54:00-05:00

Today’s release of the ISM manufacturing figures shows continued contraction, which is little surprise; but on a positive note, the top-line figure (PMI) rose a bit from last month to end at 35.6. While this is still very low by...

A Whole New Supply Chain

2009-01-30T10:49:39-05:00

"We’re in the middle of a period that I refer to as a period of 'combinatorial innovation.' So if you look historically, you’ll find periods in history where there would be the availability of different component parts that innovators could...

Bravo Intel

2009-01-15T12:51:27-05:00

We wanted to give Intel kudos for a recent round of investments by its venture capital arm. Intel Capital is investing $23M in three Indian companies (individual amounts were not disclosed): One97 Communications, which provides telecom services Global Talent Track...