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
We live in a world of digital communications, where social media provides the global population with the opportunity to come together like never before. This has brought a whole new dimension to consumer interaction. It provides instant channels for information exchange, experience and opinion sharing. Social media and multichannel digital
