Image Enabling The Supply Chain

A picture is worth a thousand words and a story is worth a thousand pictures. It’s little wonder, then, that people often long to describe a problem with a picture. In their personal lives, technology savvy people snap a picture and send it off to get a problem solved. And yet, within the supply chain, no vendor has included end-to-end image tracking for stock keeping units (SKUs) as part of the base functionality of their product. In the early days of our company, we shared information about our minimum viable product (MVP) within our network. A West coast manufacturer was interested in testing our product, so we did a pilot in the organization’s warehouse and everyone there loved it. During a pilot post mortem, the customer shared headaches associated with chargebacks. Click here to continue reading this blog.

Some people think that the supply chain is behind in terms of technology. The technology, though, is available. As an industry, we should start looking at the best ways of leveraging these technologies for benefit. Consider mobile devices. My nine-year-old daughter uses an iPad and FaceTime to video chat with me and never gives it a second thought. In a distribution center, though, it’s not so easy. Not every operator working in a distribution center can take pictures and or even send a text message. Many don’t even have access latest mobile devices. The supply chain community is risk averse and the cost of failure in such a mission critical function is high. The focus is on being timely, as well as complying with a variety of regulations and standards. When a box leaves the distribution center, getting it to the final destination requires cooperation between a variety of entities. As it passes from the distribution center through Fed Ex to the United States P...

LoadProof Story told by the Shrek Donkey. Take charge of your retail chargebacks through LoadProof. Here's the LoadProof Website: http://loadproof.com

Block chain has great potential to solve problems and address supply chain problems. Personally, the area that excites me most is track and trace — especially when you consider the possibility of taking these capabilities to the next level. Let us take a step back and look at the current supply chain processes and their evolution. Packing slip, paper ASN Advance Shipment Notices (ASNs) are sent in advance to let the receiver know what products or deliveries are hitting the facility. This allows the receiver to do a few things better including: Preparing labor to receive the product. Plan for order allocation and fulfillment. Effectively plan the supply and demand to run the corporate supply chain optimally and efficiently without huge spikes. Raise awareness in advance of potential exceptions. In the past, supply chain partners shared packing slips via fax. Information sharing in this manner, although labor intensive, was worth it because it resulted i...

Back in the good old days, when I had just arrived in the working world, supply chain management was still a new field. I was working at a new company and we learned new things every day. It was like drinking out of a fire hose, both exciting and challenging. Time just flew by. Soon, we hit the end of the year and with it the holiday party, complete with all the normal festivities, music, and food. The best part was hanging out with the founder and CEO of the company. We would ask him questions about the promise of the then newly emerging .com boom. The Internet was the big buzz in the Silicon Valley then. It was a time when small companies raised millions of dollars with a PowerPoint presentation. Meanwhile, he was focused on figuring out the formula, not just for acquiring new customers, but also for delivering in terms of execution. He wanted every deployment to be a huge success, with customers getting measurable return on investment (ROI) and a clear pa...