Entries categorized as ‘Socks and sandals’
At times that we are talking about tracking and tracing, and different types of unique product ID:s (yes, mostly still RFID tags, just check out The Wall for all the RFID in the supply chain related CFPs, or CSCMP’s “connective technology” project that is calling for cases, white papers and academic papers*) it is almost a nostalgic issue to hear a “barcode beep”. So here it is. Let’s see at which point it will become almost-obsolete like old rotary landline telephones that one can nowadays see in design museums. But back to barcodes, if you come across one you want to check for its ownership and/or item description, here’s a website that does exactly that. Results can be quite surprising!
Gyöngyi
* Deadline for cases of 1-2 pages and “vision white papers” of 5-10 pages: Sep 30, 2008, to be sent to CSCMPResearch@cscmp.org
Academic papers should go to the Journal of Business Logistics directly
Categories: Call for papers · Socks and sandals
Green is the new black in SCM…and similar conversion has taken place in Harvard Business Review.
Apparently, “no facet of doing business remains untouched”.
Where? How?
This has not been translated in many (all) of the textbooks I teach in Logistics and Operations Management.
Árni
Categories: Socks and sandals · Supply Chain Management · Sustainability
I am teaching Operations Management this semester, including two lectures on Failure Prevention and Quality Management, respectively.
The core textbook (Slack et al. 2007, 5th Ed.) includes many illustrative case examples, but suffers from the physical, static format of the book. Pieces from the trade press and other business media can, however, be of help by providing some contemporary examples from “practice” (this why it is useful for students to become acknowledged with this debate). One of the more “interesting” references during the lectures has been…and here it comes, UK…Terminal 5. This story literally walked into the classroom.
If you search for some of the following on Google, a some evidence will appear that allows further “synthesis”: Terminal 5 March 2008 operations baggage milan failure chaos
This allows students to deal with contemporary management challenges that have not been discussed by editorial boards (or filtered through?) of case books (eeerhhmm).
I am not sure this is what my co-blogger Gyöngyi had in mind on this piece on “The gift of travel time” 
. I refer more and more to Mintzberg’s “Why I hate flying” in my lectures.
Árni
Categories: Operations management · Service management · Socks and sandals
Tagged: Operations management
February 14, 2008 · 1 Comment
It’s always funny to read about outraged customers on days like today (it also goes for any other bigger celebration, V-Day just being one of them). You order sthg to be delivered ON the day, and it never gets to you - or arrives a week later etc. No wonder that you are outraged and in extreme cases, swear to never buy sthg from the particular company again.
It’s even funnier to read the responses of companies. Too large orders. The supply chain cannot cope… ??? It’s not as if V-Day wouldn’t be predictable. It happens the same day every year. In that sense it is even easier than reacting to the first snow of the year (which even Helsinki hasn’t seen much of this year). Even buying behaviour is predictable: cards, flowers and chocolate, not much else. (However, chocolate lovers might want to look at this article on labour issues in the chocolate supply chain before making their choice. The same goes for flowers.)
There is a case to be made for retailers and distribution channels at large: concepts such as vendor managed inventory, or plainly, increased SC transparency might be called for. No wonder there are no supplies if POS data and/or even simple forecasts aren’t shared. But there is also a case to be made for chocolate manufacturers - V-Day happens every year, and even if your orders don’t reflect it, you can count on consumers wanting more of your stuff. Outsmarting wholesalers and retailers might not be a bad idea in this case. Both up- and downstream - where are the lessons learned from the bullwhip effect?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Socks and sandals · Supply Chain Management
Chain, lean, agile, power…are few but many metaphors in SCM, that contribute to clarity and confusion.
Few months ago I took on a project that implied more change management than I’d ever expected. I contacted a colleague for an advice, who liased with an independent supply chain scholar from Northern Minnesota. Following was suggested:
In program/project design and re-design work I have stumbled upon an effective technique to “change the rules.”
When someone mumbles: “No, that can’t be done, it will never work;” tilt your head back slowly and then laugh loudly.
After a pause, look at your watch and say: “my conference call to Kiev is scheduled to start in 5 minutes;” then turn quickly and walk away.
Kiev is calling several times a week.
A further development of this is the Thelma & Louise approach to change in organisations. In stead of champions and change agens…you need a Thelma and a Louise (and a Brad Pitt?).
Árni
Categories: Socks and sandals · supply chain
February 13, 2008 · 1 Comment
This is certainly a different kind of journal article in a transportation journal: Jain and Lyon’s (200 
“The gift of travel time“, going through whether you see travelling (esp. to work) as a burden or a “time out”… Time geography meets transportation research in a truly unique (and entertaining) way.
If you get into it and want to analyse your travels even further, try McDonald’s (forthcoming) article that explains adults’ transportation behaviour by their children’s routes and choices.
So who affects your daily routes, modal choices, and perceptions of transportation?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic publications · Socks and sandals
How would you explain a supply chain to someone who’s never heard that term? For fun I asked for metaphors at the very beginning of a SCM course. The responses were just stunning! Some were more close to actual definitions (talking about flows, circles etc.), but others were beautiful analogies… Thanks for the people who agreed to share them, here they come:
“Supply Chain Management is like picking up a paper clip from a can or a bin on a regular work desk - one never knows how many paper clips are connected to the first one, in which order, of which colour or even how they’re connected. Then, clearing the mess up, one learns about the links and the ways the paper clips are connected to each other.” (Alex Kajanti)
“A bundle of grapes, where the individual grapes are all conected to the stem, The stem is the “mother company” and the grapes are the suppliers. Supply chain management looks at ex. the efficiensy of how the individual grape contributes to the stem.” (Richard Varis)
“I could describe SCM as a city, were different areas or points of interests represent companies in the supply chain, and the traffic represents flows of goods, information etc. For a city, smoothness in traffic is important as is different flows in a SC.” (Casimir von Frenckell)
“I´ll probably use a system of the human body, maybe the blood system: it gets all the organes connected (oxygen, hormones, aliments) and allows the whole “machine” to work (live actually)” (Mahjoub Faraj)
“Metaphor: human body; it does not work well as a whole if all the different parts are not working together. A network of different functions” (Jenni Tuukkanen)
“Rainbow” (Ville Kangasmuukko)
Any other metaphors that come to your mind? If so, post them as a reply!
Gyöngyi
Categories: Socks and sandals · Supply Chain Management
We thought there were too few SCM-related podcasts out there so we started to add on to them with our own 
Thanks Steve Brady for a new podcast on sustainability in supply chains - which can be found here. More podcasts are to follow, just check out Steve’s website regularly!
Gyöngyi
P.S. and thanks Steve for a promotion
Categories: Socks and sandals · Supply Chain Management · Sustainability
I’ve got myself a new hobby: collecting definitions of SCM from various sources.
One sunny day, I shall auction the whole collection on eBay.
And retire.
Árni
Categories: Socks and sandals · Supply Chain Management
Having received the latest news from the “Kulturmanagement network“, I’m all for the “M” in SCM to be changed to “music”. As the Dec issue of this newsletter points out, no cultural event exists without logistics :-) In fact, no event does, as Nina Modig’s series of publications on event logistics will highlight. One of the issues we all remember from Nofoma 2007 and LRN 2007 was the food - or lack of it
But back to cultural administration*, one of the most interesting insights was to see its very definition looking at processes (in terms of material flows, locational questions…) rather than events, which the authors linked to a call for including logistics in the toolbox for cultural administrators. New are thus a bachelors, and a masters programme in “cultural engineering” in Magdeburg that combines cultural administration and knowledge management with indeed, logistics.
Gyöngyi
* Kulturmanagement stands for “cultural administration”; one of these lovely concepts that is so difficult to translate to other languages. Just see our debate on SCM in different languages…
Categories: Education & Management Development · Socks and sandals
