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Demand variability: 4 action steps to take in a time of crisis

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 Demand variability: 4 actions steps to take in a time of crisis 1. Maintain transparent, proactive relationships with your suppliers. Ensure your key suppliers have full visibility in your projected demand, preferably in real-time, to secure inventory for building safety stocks. Having good visibility of both demand and supply enables an organization to manage demand signals more accurately, respond to customer requests faster, and smooth the effects of demand variation. 2. Activate alternate sources of supply If you have multi-sourced key inputs, move quickly to activate secondary supplier relationships and secure additional critical inventory and capacity. Explore potential opportunities to establish shared resource pools for  raw materials  inventory. 3. Reduce lead times Long lead times increase the probability of a bullwhip effect, so find ways to reduce lead time from sources of supply. It also allows you to react quickly to changing demand. 4. Update inventory policy and planni

The 48 keywords for Supply Chain Professional's

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Keywords are key to having your resume noticed! With the increasing prevalence of scanning technology, employing keywords in a resume to attract maximum attention by a human and/or computer scanner  has become a critical component of building an attention getting resume. Keywords are the terms deemed by the employer to represent the essential job attributes. Each industry and profession has specific keywords. Companies and recruiters are searching resumes for specific keywords and key phrases to find the candidates with the skills, qualifications and expertise to fulfill the job requirements. Incorporating keywords into a resume and cover letter help you to secure optimum attention and outperform your competition. The top 48 keywords in Supply Chain / Logistics are: Asset Management Capital Budget Change Management Continuous Improvement Contract Negotiations Cost Reduction Customer Service Customs Compliance Demand Planning Distribution Management Facility Management FAR / DAR Fleet

Why Does Geography Matter in Supply Chain?

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Why Does Geography Matter in Supply Chain? It should be clear by now that the supply chain network design problem is just as much about geography as it is about business strategy. The two cannot be separated. Take these supply chain considerations for example: • If you have a plant in the interior of China and some of your customers are in New York, you need to physically get the product out of China, across the ocean, and to New York.  • If you make wood products (like paper or boards), you can locate plants either close to the raw materials (forest areas) or close to your customers (usually located a significant distance away from the large forest areas).  As the examples highlight, decisions about the location of your facilities impact many aspects of your business and require you to make trade-offs. Specifically geography drives the following: Transportation Cost Service Level Risk Local Labor, Skills, Materials, and Utilities Taxes Carbon Emissions Written By  Gazi Sanaul Hasan 

3 Inventory Management Techniques

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When businesses don’t have a handle on the activity of their inventory, or worse, track it with outdated spreadsheets and data entry, the rest of the pieces, like order fulfilment, don’t fall into place. When you don’t know how much inventory you have on hand, you can’t make smart reorder decisions. 3 Inventory Management Techniques Safety stock inventory Safety stock inventory management is extra inventory being ordered beyond expected demand. This technique is used to prevent stock outs typically caused by incorrect forecasting or unforeseen changes in customer demand. FIFO and LIFO LIFO and FIFO are methods to determine the cost of inventory. FIFO, or First in, First out, assumes the older inventory is sold first. FIFO is a great way to keep inventory fresh.LIFO, or Last-in, First-out, assumes the newer inventory is typically sold first. LIFO helps prevent inventory from going bad. Just-in-time inventory management Just-in-time (JIT) inventory management is a technique that arrange

5 KEY SUPPLY CHAIN MODELS AND METHODS THAT ARE USED TO ANALYZE SUPPLY CHAINS

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  5 KEY SUPPLY CHAIN MODELS AND METHODS 1. DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICS This is the best type of supply chain management analysis that you can use to check out the past performance of the supply chain. It will tell you what has happened, so you can check if the results are matching with your plans and objectives. This method uses data mining to gather raw information from the supply chain. Summarizing it and presenting it in a compact form will allow you to get a clear image of the desired period in the past. 2. PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS If you want to see what might happen in the future, this is the method you should use. As the name suggests, predictive analytics will form potential scenarios that may take place in a month, two, a year from now. Although it is never guaranteed that they will happen exactly as predictive by this method. Even so, you will know what to expect, in a significant proportion, so you can adjust your plans accordingly. 3. PRESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICS In case you want to see wh

What is ASYCUDA?

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ASYCUDA is a computerized customs management system which covers most foreign trade procedures. The system handles manifests and customs declarations, accounting procedures, transit and suspense procedures.  It generates trade data that can be used for statistical economic analysis. The ASYCUDA software is developed in Geneva by UNCTAD. ASYCUDA takes into account the international codes and standards developed by ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation), WCO (World Customs Organization), eg. Data Model, and the United Nations.  It can be configured to suit the national characteristics of individual Customs regimes, National Tariff & legislation. ASYCUDA provides Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) between traders and Customs using prevailing standards such as XML. There are three generations of ASYCUDA in use: ASYCUDA version 2.7, ASYCUDA++, and ASYCUDA World. -Gazi Sanaul Hasan 

Lean Supply Chain

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While the standards of typical supply chain management are known to most business owners, a new wave of lean supply chain management is becoming more popular for a variety of reasons . LEAN SUPPLY CHAIN DEFINITION Understanding lean supply chain definition starts with what effective supply chain management hopes to accomplish. In general, what is lean supply chain starts with operating on the same principles of efficiency, but emphasizes overall quality. This means a reduction of defective goods to zero, lowering waste, and increasing efficiency as a result. The idea behind lean supply chain management is to emphasize a lower number of returns by customers so that every product that is sold is kept. By reducing quality control issues and having to handle customers with their returns, lean supply chain management reduces overall expenses. CHARACTERISTICS OF LEAN SUPPLY CHAIN The characteristics of lean supply chain management start with the products themselves. An examination of why de