December 28, 2020. We ordered the food but couldn’t find the riders to deliver them. Our family of cousins, uncles, and aunts couldn’t be together for New Year’s Eve. Reunions and parties were not allowed in lieu of ongoing restrictions brought on by the CoVID-19 pandemic. Instead, we ordered food from a food shop andContinue reading “Lessons Learned from E-Commerce”
Author Archives: Ellery
Behold The PSI: A Basic Tool for Supply Chain Planning
The PSI or Production-Sales-Inventory is a basic spreadsheet template for supply chain planners. It looks like this: The PSI typically has three sections: production, sales, and inventories. Production represents the in-flow of an item or what’s going into inventory. A basic example is finished goods input coming from a manufacturing operation’s output. We can alsoContinue reading “Behold The PSI: A Basic Tool for Supply Chain Planning”
Why Shifting from the Month-End Surge to Delivery by Demand is Common Sense
“We just have to live with it,” the General Manager replied. The GM was responding to my comment that month-end surges in sales orders were causing inefficiencies in the company’s logistics operations. I was presenting an operations assessment report to a company that distributed name-brand computer printers and accessories. One of the key observations fromContinue reading “Why Shifting from the Month-End Surge to Delivery by Demand is Common Sense”
A Letter to the IE: More than Ever, We Need to Lead the World to Productivity
Dear Industrial Engineer* The year 2020 ended without a happy ending. The SARS-CoV-2 virus had not gone away. It continues to be a global threat going into 2021. Political and enterprise leaders have done all they can to defeat the virus. There was hope. Thanks to record-breaking world-class collaboration efforts, vaccines have become realities andContinue reading “A Letter to the IE: More than Ever, We Need to Lead the World to Productivity”
How Important Productivity is to the Value Chain
The fast-food restaurant drive-thru I go to every Sunday morning hasn’t been serving the liquid creamers that accompany the coffee I order with my meals. At first, they said the creamers were out of stock. A week later, they said they can only serve one (1) creamer instead of the two (2) that should comeContinue reading “How Important Productivity is to the Value Chain”
Logistics Solutions Can Be Simple
A medium sized retailer of health food items imports products from abroad. The retailer prides itself with a very well organised warehouse and a crew of workers that swiftly repack the imported products and send them to the retailer’s stores all over the country. The retailer’s sales department, however, has constantly complained about lack ofContinue reading “Logistics Solutions Can Be Simple”
How to Deal with Insults
I was insulted the other day. A senior director on the board of trustees of a high-rise building said I lacked technical education and experience. For a person who is an engineering graduate and has been in business for almost 40 years, that sounded very much at least like an insult. It’s not the firstContinue reading “How to Deal with Insults”
Six (6) Principles to Successful Flexibility
Flexible manufacturing was popular in the 1990’s. Twenty years into the 21st century, we don’t hear much about it anymore. Instead, we hear a lot more about digital and connectivity. Amid a raging pandemic, people also talk about resilience. Whatever the buzzword, what matters in the end is how well enterprises deliver versus customer demand. Continue reading “Six (6) Principles to Successful Flexibility”
The Terror Boss
Most of us will eventually encounter the Terror Boss. The Terror boss is that direct superior who shreds a subordinate’s self-esteem. He or she: Yells at you, with expletives and words not acceptable for children below 18 years old; Finds faults, never praises, never has anything good to say about you; Assigns lots of workContinue reading “The Terror Boss”
Managing Multiple Risks
Threats of fire, natural disasters, and supply chain disruptions don’t take breaks. They don’t necessarily come one at a time. Risks are mutually exclusive. They can occur simultaneously. Ongoing threats make our lives complicated. We are constantly stretching resources to keep workplaces and homes safe and secure from risks. We need to always consider thatContinue reading “Managing Multiple Risks”
Ellery's Essays 