By Steve Tracey📧 and Kusumal Ruamsook📧
In Supply Chain Xchange, June 7, 2024.
Contemporary supply chains have become more comprehensive as a result of economic globalization, and increased product and service complexity driven by ever-increasing consumer demand and expectations. Rising against this backdrop is the importance of supply chain compression. Literally defined as “the act of making something smaller or shorter,” compression can be a useful strategy for supply chain management (SCM) that potentially generates competitive advantages for companies. While compression-based exploits can be pursued across supply chain processes, doing so in the new product development (NPD) stage can provide a great opportunity to realize the value of compression strategies. Developing new products can often be time-consuming and resource intensive. By introducing 3D virtual prototyping and extended reality technologies, companies can make their new product development process more efficient, agile, and interactive.
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Related CSCR White Paper:
Read “Remastering Supply Chain Compression in Virtual 3D: Exploring the Potentials of 3D Virtual Technology Applications” here.
A major shift in the focus of branding has occurred in the last two decades. Traditionally, brands were associated with products, and consumers purchasing the products were often unaware of the company behind them. Today, a growing number of companies place greater emphasis on corporate brands and corporate-dominant brand architecture as a means to navigate the competitive and hyperconnected market environment. 
Enterprises are increasingly realizing the ability of digital technologies to create a competitive advantage in the procurement function. To date, digital technologies like analytics, artificial intelligence, and robotics process automation have been widely deployed in various procurement domains. Now, a much-hyped newcomer, blockchain, is swiftly gathering momentum. Blockchain has advanced significantly since its early application as the underlying technology of Bitcoin, expanding its field of possible applications. In particular, its ability to enable transparency, traceability, operational efficiency, and trust among users could potentially disrupt procurement operations. Supply chain executives cannot afford to ignore this promising, but yet-to-mature technology. However, blockchain’s novelty and dynamic innovations can make it hard to grasp how this evolving technology could be applied in the real world. To help procurement organizations catch the wave of blockchain technology, this article examines blockchain applications in digital procurement. It highlights areas of applicability and discusses how different blockchain utilities can be advantageously harnessed across procurement processes.
Over the past decade, 
The COVID-19 pandemic and government efforts to contain the spread of the virus through travel restrictions, social distancing, and shelter-in-place orders have widespread influence on business operations and personal activities. During this time of crisis, supply chains are at the forefront not only in business and government planning, but also in the minds of consumers. The COVID-19 pandemic spotlight is in play across supply chain enterprises, but it has shone particularly brightly on the transport and logistics (T&L) operators in their role as front-line, essential service providers. The T&L industry provides a vital “link” that keeps goods moving through supply chains, and this role is ever more important during the pandemic. As front-line, essential service providers, T&L operators face unique challenges that require a balancing act of keeping workers safe and goods moving under market volatility amplified by the pandemic. In this post, we explore COVID-19 impacts on the industry and highlight key tenets of effective T&L responding strategies.
For years, logistics professionals have referred to the final leg of the order delivery process as the last mile. It has always been important, but as the volume of e-commerce orders rises exponentially, last-mile logistics has taken on increased significance for delivery service providers, and is now front and center in the minds of shippers. The good news is that last-mile capabilities have come a long way and continue to improve. Customers now have a variety of delivery options from which to choose, including traditional, next-day and even same-day delivery in urban areas, and they can track their packages from the sellers’ point-of-fulfillment all the way to their shipping address. The bad news: While the ship-to address may mark the end of the last mile, in many instances, it is the beginning of the last yard. That’s the distance from the shipping address to a pickup location at that address, which is often a blind spot in the delivery process. As a result, many customers end up going to a pick-up point after seeing that their package was “delivered” on their carrier’s tracking service, only to discover that their package is nowhere to be found. This type of incident underscores the fact that failures in the last yard may negate the goodwill created by shippers and delivery service providers that deliver shipments considered “on-time and complete” as per customer requirements. The last yard could be the longest yard.
Supply chains are becoming incredibly complex due to global networks of interdependent organizations, rising consumer expectations, and volatile business environments. Complex supply chains bring a wealth of data created by people, systems, and machines from a variety of sources, including new types of data such as social media and IoT. The potential value of this data is enormous for supply chain management (SCM), but simply having rich data does not realize the potential for it. To make data truly valuable, companies need the ability to analyze large amounts of data and convert them into actionable insights. In the search for an engine for Big Data analysis, companies will find answers in artificial intelligence (AI). This article discusses how AI capabilities are well suited to SCM and the key processes of plan, buy, make, and flow.
The trade-off between cost and response time has traditionally been one of the primary factors companies consider when designing their supply chain networks. We recently studied the impact of proximity and agility in supply chain network design, examining how online retailers can benefit by restructuring their distribution networks to move beyond scale-based network design. In addition, we studied ways in which companies with agility-enhanced networks can leverage centrally controlled systems through better fulfillment and replenishment algorithms. Through this research, we found that scale and responsiveness don’t need to be in direct conflict with each other. In fact, the ability to deliver on-the-fly fulfillment and network-wide replenishment means that retailers can offer faster delivery times without driving up costs much and can even improve their resiliency against risks of disruptions.