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- RFID: A Meeting of the Minds
Propelled by new mandates at major retailers such as Wal-Mart, and by initiatives at the U.S. Department of Defense, growing numbers of organizations in a wide variety of vertical niches are adopting RFID, a "paradigm-shifting" innovation that is generating operational efficiencies and strategic advantages within supply chains — but considerable concerns among managers. To address those concerns, the RFID industry's best and brightest minds met for a panel discussion about the perils and promise of this proliferating technology. - Investment Buying
The main objective of investment buying (IB) is to maximize profit for wholesalers, retailers and other distribution entities. Because IB’s focus on ROI results from incremental purchases, companies will see increased inventory levels and less frequent turns—which is often viewed as counter to traditional replenishment models. - Retail Planning Systems
Retailers must understand the truth about measuring scalability and assessing technology for planning systems to ensure that they are selecting a planning platform that will support both the current standard and potential future vision for planning best practices. - Demand Chain Optimization
Managing the demand chain, from manufacturers through wholesalers, distributors and retailers, and onto consumers, is a daunting task. Creating efficiency in the demand chain requires a combination of art and science. - Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization
The optimal deployment of inventory is a vital business function for an enterprise. This paper will examine alternative approaches for tackling the thorny problem of managing inventory in a multi-echelon network and will present a method for minimizing inventory across echelons while simultaneously meeting all of your customer service goals. - Technology Visioning
Real-time replenishment is emerging as the future of retail replenishment. With real-time replenishment, inventory levels in the store and in the distribution center are continually assessed based on a constant stream of POS and RFID data. - Best Practices in Transportation Management (Aberdeen Group)
To identify today’s success strategies for transportation management, AberdeenGroup researched the transportation practices of a variety of large and midsize companies. By combining well-established strategies with emerging best practices such as carrier collaboration, universal information access and 360-degree scorecarding, a number of companies have successfully transformed their transportation management operations to drive increased business value, while keeping cost and capacity issues in check. - New Ways to Master Order Fulfillment: Why Distribution Savvy Companies Are Moving to Distributed Order Management
As companies move to multi-channel selling and grow to a broader geographic customer base, their natural tendency is to increase inventory levels close to the point of demand. They often gravitate to opening regional distribution centers to minimize stock-outs and satisfy their geographically dispersed customers. However, just as customers have no patience for order delays, shareholders have no patience for reduced inventory turns, increased inventory investment, and higher working capital costs. Because of these dynamics, the traditional, static way of fulfilling a customer's order out of the geographically closest warehouse is becoming outdated. A technology is emerging to support the seemingly divergent goals of improving customer service while reducing inventory and capital investments: Distributed Order Management. - RFID in the Consumer Industries: Being a Winner, Not a Follower (Aberdeen Group)
The benefits of implementing radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in products promise to go well beyond those already achieved with bar codes. Because RFID systems can identify the individual instance of a product (not just its stock-keeping unit, or (SKU), as well as "watch" when a product physically moves via continuous monitoring, they bring a new level of detail to product tracking. Accordingly, RFID adoption will drive improved inventory management, process efficiencies, data accuracy, enhanced asset utilization, and reduced leakage. - New Strategies for Transportation Management - How Transportation Management Practices Are Changing to Meet Today's Market Pressures (Aberdeen Group)
Accelerating customer demands, along with new market pressures such as tightening freight capacity and rising fuel and other accessorial charges, are forcing transportation executives to rethink how they deliver value to the enterprise, how they plan transportation loads, and how they measure and motivate performance. - Extending Warehouse Management Beyond the Four Walls - A Benchmark Report (Aberdeen Group)
Distribution processes are being transformed by new wireless-enabled technologies such as RFID location technology and other lower-cost wireless network options such as cellular and wifi. Logistics managers now can afford to extend their business process control beyond the warehouse walls to improve asset productivity and delivery precision. Leading supply chain managers are rethinking how to integrate inbound vehicles, dock activity, and yard management into traditional transportation and warehousing processes. They are looking at new ways to control product movements and improve velocity in drop yards, satellite facilities, and even their suppliers' warehouses. - Top Fulfillment Strategies for Midsize Enterprises - How Midsize Companies Succeed with Warehousing and Transportation (Aberdeen Group)
Midsize manufacturers and distributors (firms with $50 million to $999 million in revenue) have intrinsic fulfillment advantages that can help them outmaneuver their larger competitors. These advantages let them tailor services and distribution processes more easily to their individual customers, including services such as private labeling and packaging, postponement, and vendor managed inventory. Best-in-class midsize firms have turned the art of personalized fulfillment services into a science, enabling them to flex their distribution models while still maintaining high productivity and cost efficiency. - From Origin to Destination: The Evolution and Future of Transportation Management Systems
With the typical transportation management system (TMS) offering a payback in one year or less, it is no wonder companies devote time, resources and money into selecting the right solution. Two areas that have seen tremendous growth and continue to hold a promising future are transportation planning and execution, which currently comprise 33.6% of North American spending on TMS, and transportation procurement, which accounts for 7.4%. Both began as relatively simple processes for reducing transportation costs and have evolved into mandatory components for a streamlined supply chain. - Last Things First: Using Reverse Logistics to Boost Asset Recovery
Market needs are changing—customers are becoming more demanding, product life cycles are shortening and regulations are emerging—forcing businesses to become more aware of the need for a robust reverse logistics management system. This paper will address the current reverse logistics market before recommending process implementation guidelines to take both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) returns from a burdensome task to a profit generating process. - RFID: The UPC of the 21st Century
The next great leap in the evolution of product tracking has emerged—automatic identification technologies. These technologies allow machines to identify objects and capture information, providing organizations with much greater degrees of control and flexibility in managing goods as they move through the supply chain. Accurately seen by many in the industry as the next transformational technology, RFID promises higher quality information and real-time tracking.
Contact Information: To learn more about Manhattan Associates' supply chain solutions, simply complete the information request form, and we will contact you. For North & South America, call +1 877.596.9208 or e-mail info_americas@manh.com. For global inquiries, call +44 (0)1344 318000 or e-mail info_global@manh.com
