The first sensors appeared many decades ago, and have been around for quite some time in various forms, even though they’ve really only entered the popular vocabulary over the past few years thanks to the Internet of Things. How do sensors work? A sensor detects events, or changes in quantities, and
Perhaps nowhere is the saying “time is money” more true than in the construction industry. There is no better indicator of project cost and budget over/underrun than the number of days on-site. Reducing that number has a near 1:1 relationship with cost cutting, so it’s no wonder that days on-site
Have you ever thought about how to improve your Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process beyond where you might be today? There's certainly no lack of advice on the topic of S&OP on the Internet. Some articles focus on the overall process while others focus on S&OP software and related support tools. In
Perhaps the greatest legacy that Ford Motor Company’s former chief executive, Alan Mulally, left behind is a culture of analytics. Ford began using analytics in the late 1990’s, but it wasn’t until their financial woes in the 2000’s and Mulally’s arrival in 2006, that analytics started to be used regularly for
Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, in its recently released 2014 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment (iOCTA), cited a report by U.S. security firm IID that predicts that the first “online murder” will occur by year end, based on the number of computer security system flaws discovered
Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) started out with big aspirations. As initially conceived, S&OP was to cover the entire domain now called Integrated Business Planning (IBP). As S&OP process implementations rolled out during the 1980’s, this broad scope turned out to be a bit much to attempt in one bite. S&OP
When I visit with customers or potential clients, they often ask, "Where do I start in order to get a handle on my supply chain?" There is no clear and concise answer, but I usually say "Follow the inventory!" Inventory is a result of decisions made. It is not the
Capital investment in production capability is the weakest link in the business value chain. It always has been and likely always will be. It’s the driving force behind the tendency towards cartels, collusion and monopolies. While it can make the first entrant into a brand new market, in the long
Imagine you are the race director for a Formula One car. Decisions must be made within seconds, sometimes in the blink of an eye. When speed is of utmost importance, it is necessary for race engineers to have all relevant race data at their fingertips. Instead of having a couple of
I’m sitting here staring at a book on my shelf entitled, “Impending Crisis”. Even knowing the copyright date, 2003, it could still be about any one of several possible crises: healthcare, financial, energy, education, environment. But no, in this case the impending crisis in question is provided by the subtitle: “Too many jobs,
What is your primary goal as a supply chain professional? It’s not about demand sensing, demand shaping or even supply planning and demand planning. At the end of the day, it’s about profit optimization. Albeit important, demand sensing and shaping are only a piece of the equation and if isolated, decisions
While managing quality within the four walls of your own operation is all well and good and totally necessary, both the market and your bottom line are demanding a more holistic, quality lifecycle approach, and in support of that aim there is a treasure trove of downstream data waiting to be
Having spent a good part of my career “owning” the data hub in IT for analytics solutions, I think I can say, the myth that IT controls all things data has become less and less true through the years – and eventually it will be completely false. Or maybe it
How much of your business performance (profit) is driven by external factors versus internal? A figure of 85% compared to 15% was mentioned at last month’s Manufacturing Analytics Summit, and although I could not find the study mentioned to confirm, it feels about right to me. Certainly more than half,
For supply chain managers and analysts Getting Demand in Shape can mean collecting the most pertinent data to support specific business processes and activities. Identifying new or previously unused data sources can be especially important. My most recent article titled “Getting Demand in Shape” in the May / June issue of APICS magazine
Insights from decision trees and other basic analytic techniques show that you don’t always need complex analytics to solve business problems and add value. This was the message from Dr. James (Jim) Foster, Director of Research and Process Development, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), at last month’s inaugural IE Group ‘Manufacturing Analytics
I led an analytical culture track at the SAS Global Forum Executive Conference last month in Washington, DC. I talked with leaders in fields as diverse as healthcare, chemical manufacturing and government. Although these organizations have very different operating models, their challenges, comments and questions were similar. They all recognized
Analytics gives us not just the ability but the imperative to separate our planning activities into two distinct segments – detailed planning that leads to budgets in support of execution, and high-level, analytic-enabled business/scenario planning. My critique of Control Towers in this blog last time led me not only to
After decades of trying to "manage" and "control" quality, manufacturers continue to struggle with consistently achieving quality excellence. To conquer the realities of today's marketplace and achieve quality excellence, manufacturers need to adopt an analytic approach to quality. The basic objective of manufacturers hasn't changed since the beginning - produce
With the increasing emphasis on responsiveness, resiliency, flexibility and agility, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the “agile” concept caught up with strategy itself. While I may have hinted at this idea four years ago in two of my earliest posts for the Value Alley, “Strategy
It is always important to continue to sell the value of analytics within your organization, especially to your leaders. Usually, these type of results are delivered via reports, dashboards, or emails. However did you know that analytics: Detects when expensive machinery like electrical submersible pumps (ESP) or oil platforms need maintenance before
From Gartner to IDC to the trade press, the watchwords in the supply chain for rest of this decade appear to be “resiliency” and “responsiveness”. It’s not going to be about promotion-based pull-through, and it’s most definitely not going to be about channel incentive-based push-through. What it’s going to be
Bridging the Rift between Dev and Ops As a member of the Product Marketing team at SAS, I spend a good part of my time researching – analyst reports, industry journals, blogs, social channels – and listening to what our customers are saying. Early last spring I began noticing the term
