Practical perspectives on supply chains, smarter operations, and building a business that’s ready for what’s next.
There’s a version of every manufacturing business where the shop floor and the board are describing different companies. The floor…
Read article : Shop Floor to Top Floor: Connecting Production Data Across the Business
Scrap and rework occupy an odd position in manufacturing accounts. They’re measured, reported, and largely tolerated — treated as a…
Read article : Reducing Scrap and Rework With Predictive Quality Analytics
Inventory turnover is the metric most likely to be quoted with confidence and understood poorly. Someone finds an industry average,…
Read article : Inventory Turnover Ratio: Benchmarks by Manufacturing Segment
Reorder points have a particular way of going wrong. Someone calculates them carefully at implementation, they’re correct for perhaps six…
Read article : How AI Sets Reorder Points That Adapt to Real Demand
The annual stocktake is one of those practices that survives more on tradition than merit. It shuts the plant, consumes…
Read article : Cycle Counting vs. Annual Stocktake: Making the Switch
Dead stock is unusual among operational problems in that everybody knows it exists and almost nobody wants to be the…
Read article : Dead Stock: How to Find It, Move It, and Stop Creating It
The argument tends to be conducted in principle, which is why it never resolves. Procurement points to volume leverage and…
Read article : Single vs. Dual Sourcing: A Risk-Based Decision Framework
Traceability tends to get built for auditors and then discovered to be operationally valuable the first time something goes wrong.…
Read article : Raw Material Traceability: From Supplier Batch to Finished Good
Ask what the lead time is on a component and you’ll get a single number. That number is in your…
Read article : Managing Raw Material Lead Time Variability
When deliveries slip, the investigation usually lands on scheduling, supplier performance, or capacity. BOM accuracy is rarely mentioned, partly because…
Read article : The Hidden Link Between BOM Accuracy and On-Time Delivery