Supply Chain View

I have just read a paper published in the Jan 07 edition of the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS) entitled “A new approach of forecasting intermittent demand for spare parts inventories in the process industries”. The authors – ZS Hua, B Zhang, J Yang and DS Tang from the University of Science and […]

In December 2006 I presented seminar for the CILT on Supply Chain Inventory Management, and this very simple demonstration comes from that presentation. It is designed to highlight the different levels of forecast accuracy that we can achieve for slow and fast SKUs. (As I mentioned in my post from 29 Nov 06, estimating forecast […]

Let’s face it, we never think our forecasts are accurate enough. We suspect there must be a better way out there. Often this is down to the simple fact that forecasting is never precise. How can it be? I often think that one of the most important eureka moments for a supply chain professional is […]

(with apologies to Peter Norvig) Some time ago, the wise and well-respected computer scientist Peter Norvig wrote an article called “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years”. I read it recently and found it so full of good sense I couldn’t resist taking the spirit of Norvig’s thoughts and applying them to supply chain management. Norvig’s […]

Today I’m continuing my analysis of supply chain management in India with some discussion of the economic context. India’s economy is growing very quickly – recently we’ve begun to worry that it’s growing too quickly, running the risk of overheating . But it would be odd if such a rapid transformation of the economy didn’t […]

I am planning to write a few posts about supply chain management in India. I am in the country working with a local client for a couple of weeks, back for the first time since my 6 weeks living in Delhi earlier in 2010/11. This is a very exciting topic, and though I have been […]

There was a pretty depressing story in the Guardian a few days ago that proposes, in typical newspaper hyperbole, that Britain is in the grip of a numeracy crisis. For once, the concern is justified. According to the article, there are 3 times as many UK adults with poor numeracy than poor literacy. That’s 15.1 […]

This was prompted by a question on the CILT’s eDiscussion forum. I thought the topic deserved a little more room for explanation, so here are my top ten tactics for simultaneous inventory reduction and service improvement. I have divided this into two posts – five tactics today, the next five coming up in part 2. […]

Supply Chain View has not been running for long, but we are already creating a library of supply chain discussion and resources. If you have just found us, here are the top articles so far: Lean Lean and inventory misconceptions Forecasting Best forecasting method for your supply chain? Forecasting intermittent demand for spare parts – […]

Welcome to Supply Chain View, a regular look at current supply chain issues. I’m Martin Arrand, an experienced supply chain and Lean consultant from the UK. I have a policy of keeping the Supply Chain View voice separate and independent, so I don’t publicise here who my my clients are. I work on projects both […]