Supply chains are big, long, comprehensive, and complicated. Managing them means dealing with multiple customers, vendors & service providers. We buy and deliver from and to distant places or just next-door. We sell many types of products and handle much more in raw & packaging materials and in-process inventories. We move merchandise via elaborate sea,Continue reading “Envisioning: The First Step to Building Supply Chains”
Author Archives: Ellery
How We Look at Life in Four Ways
There are four (4) kinds of people: Pessimists see only the bad in life. Optimists look for the good in things. Realists balance both good and bad. Hypocrites don’t have a view about good or bad; they see life as a means to gain benefits for themselves. Pessimism, optimism, realism, and hypocrisy are howContinue reading “How We Look at Life in Four Ways”
Strategic Planning as Problem Solving: Why Not?
We sometimes create problems more than we encounter them. A large conglomerate builds a huge packaging facility in the outskirts of Manila. When I visited the plant, I asked the operations manager why such a big facility was built? “We built the facility to attract customers,” the operations managers said. “So, it was built,Continue reading “Strategic Planning as Problem Solving: Why Not?”
Why We Need to Collaborate & Not Accommodate in Improving Supply Chains
We formalise our supply chain relationships via agreements we forge with our partners, who are our vendors, 3rd party service providers, & customers. We manage our supply chain operations to ensure we perform to the agreed expectations of our partners. Most supply chains have existing infrastructure in place when we negotiate with our partners. OurContinue reading “Why We Need to Collaborate & Not Accommodate in Improving Supply Chains”
Bridging the Supply Chain Management-Engineering Gap
Engineers turn scientific ideas into reality. They do it by identifying problems, studying the data, and finally solving them. Engineers apply concepts from the pure sciences, such as Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, & Biology. We see these concepts come to life in the fields of civil, electrical, mechanical, & chemical engineering, and in their sub-specialties suchContinue reading “Bridging the Supply Chain Management-Engineering Gap”
Relationships are What Makes Our Supply Chains
Supply chains are models of the relationships within and between enterprises which govern the flow of merchandise and services from their sources to end-users. We build our supply chains based on these relationships. The systems and structures of our organisations and with the enterprises we do business with stem from strategies and policies resulting fromContinue reading “Relationships are What Makes Our Supply Chains”
Setting Up a System in the Face of Uncertainty
A large property management company set up a uniform accounting system for all the buildings it manages. The accounting system utilized a customized software program in which each building’s bookkeeper is required to use. The software allowed the bookkeepers to enter invoices and vouchers and update the building’s books of accounts in real-time. The customizedContinue reading “Setting Up a System in the Face of Uncertainty”
The Challenge of Working Together in Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Many of our enterprises do Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP). And each of us does it differently. Because we each have our own way of doing S&OP, the results vary from one organisation to the next. It’s no surprise, then, that there would be criticism over S&OP. The absence of uniformity drives us to compareContinue reading “The Challenge of Working Together in Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)”
The Three (3) Supply Chain Cycles
Supply chains span from sources to users, passing from one enterprise to the next. And we cannot manage supply chains on our own. We need to work together with vendors, customers, and service providers in procuring, producing, and delivering the goods & services. We, perhaps, see supply chains and our individual place in them likeContinue reading “The Three (3) Supply Chain Cycles”
Deliberate Scarcity
Whenever I go see my doctor at her clinic at the hospital, I always would find myself waiting in line with other patients. The clinics adjacent to my doctor’s would also have patients waiting, in which sometimes the queues would overflow into the corridor. Even if I had called ahead and set an appointment, IContinue reading “Deliberate Scarcity”
Ellery's Essays 