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Category Archives: Demand chains
Working Capital Productivity, transaction costs and Demand chains
I recently wrote about the productivity of working capital, and my view that the productivity of the capital was a revised calculation that all businesses should consider. Clearly, the best way to increase the productivity of the capital required to run … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, OE, Operations
Tagged customer, lean, Operations, supply chain, Value chain
1 Comment
How do you measure “customer focused”?
Customer focused has become a cliché, it appears in a wide range of material, usually it seems, written by people who have never interacted with a customer in their lives. So how do you measure customer focused? Here are some … Continue reading
Wake up Woolworths suppliers
How long will it take for the politicians in this country to forge an acceptable compromise amongst all the interests in the carbon debate, and take meaningful action.? Probably forever, and we will end up with the proverbial camel after … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Management, Marketing, Operations, Sales
Tagged customer, Operations, retailer, supply chain
1 Comment
Isaac Newton’s laws not always hold true?
Newton is one of the real genius’s of history, he promulgated a series of laws that form a key part of the foundation of following scientific success. However, he did not get it all right. “To every action, there is … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Management, Strategy
Tagged Marketing, Strategy, Value chain
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Parallel not sequential.
Supply or Value chains are essentially sequential, one activity logically follows the completion of the one prior, and in streamlining the timing and handover parts of a process, you can build great efficiency. However, great leaps in performance will not … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Management, Operations
Tagged lean, Management, Operations, Value chain
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Control in a supply chain.
Three things constitute the basis of decision making in most enterprises, Risk, Cost and Reward. Boiled down, this is what it is all about. In a supply chain, each participant does its own assessment and comes to a conclusion about … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Management, Strategy
Tagged customer, supply chain, value, Value chain
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Incentive alignment in a chain.
One of the hidden challenges in most transformations of a supply chain to a demand chain, is the alignment of the incentives through the chain. For a demand chain to be successful, each point in the chain must see its … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Strategy
Tagged performance assessment, supply chain, Value chain
2 Comments
Can Facebook or Linked-in replace your lawyer?
Nice thought. Contracts are the usual form of defining an agreement, they are an enforceable substitute for trust that each party will keep his end of the bargain. However, the web has made information so freely available, that the potential … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Management, Strategy
Tagged Management, performance assessment, Value chain
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Transparency as a manager of performance
There is a theme in the demand chain category of this blog. Wherever I go, I see the power of information transparency to improve performance, not just in commercial situations. There is an ongoing battle in Australian education for school … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Management, Marketing, Strategy
Tagged Management, performance assessment, Strategy
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Demand = orders + lost opportunities.
Most supply chains are driven by orders, someone reacts when an order is received. The niggling question is always about demand, as most recognise it drives orders, inventories, innovation, competitive pressure, and so on, but is rarely measured. Orders are … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Management, Sales, Strategy
Tagged category management, performance assessment, Sales
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Who do you speak to?
The churn of employees in large companies often creates difficulties in retaining a continuity of relationship with customers. This particularly happens in situations where a buyer has substantial market power, such as a large retailer. How do you build a … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Management, Sales
Tagged category management, retailer, Sales, supply chain, Value chain
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An agile demand chain.
About the only thing we know about forecasts is that they are virtually always wrong, often drastically. This being the case, the ability to quickly react to short term changes in supply and demand, an advanced degree of agility would … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Operations
Tagged category management, lean, Management, Marketing, Operations, retailer, supply chain, value, Value chain
3 Comments
An orchestra as a metaphor for a chain.
Coordination and Control are the key words in managing demand chains, and an orchestra is a great metaphor for a demand chain. To work effectively a chain needs control in the sense of a conductor in an orchestra, who dictates … Continue reading
Stages in chain development
Over many years of being involved in the evolution of demand chains, there appears to be a number of stages through which they evolve. It is almost always iterative, often with many false starts and dead ends, but those that … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains
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Ultimate collaborative mechanism
The uneven distribution of power in a supply chain is the norm. To move beyond simple supply to a value chain, or further to a demand chain, the decision making power needs to be distributed more evenly through the chain via … Continue reading
A contract and an act of trust
Two weeks ago, on coming to an agreement with a new client, sealed with a handshake, I indicated I would send him a letter that outlined our agreement. Pretty standard practice in my industry, but his response surprised me. He … Continue reading
Trust or truth.
Trust is often cited as the key in making relationships, personal or commercial work. What is sometimes poorly understood is that trust is an outcome of lots of other things, primary amongst them is truth, along with consideration of … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains
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Horizontal and vertical chains.
The usual, and correct view of a supply chain is a number of competitors at each point in the chain competing to provide the goods and services necessary to send the goods along to the next stage. The classic … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Marketing
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Independence and interdependence
Interdependence drives successful collaboration, and collaborative arrangements never survive without clear areas of interdependence. When individual collaborators judge their actions in the context of the best outcome for the group, rather than their own short term best interests, … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains, Strategy
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Information itself is no longer power.
In the past, those who held the information held the power, no longer is it so clear cut. Now, we have so many options opened up to us that the sharing of information is the new power, as information attracts … Continue reading
Posted in Demand chains
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