by Michael Watson

Determining the best delivery frequency for suppliers into your facilities involves trading off three key factors.

by Michael Watson

I recently wrote an article for Supply Chain Digest (“Three Types of Supply Chain Buffers”) that discussed that every supply chain has variability and will buffer this variability with some form of inventory, capacity, or time.

by Michael Watson

At our site for our book, Supply Chain Network Design, we have a page that pulls together the following case studies:

1. Mars and Wrigley merger
2. Whirlpool and Maytag merger

by Michael Watson

Many businesses lease equipment rather than purchase it. This has tax and finance advantages since the assets are not listed on the books of the lease. Also, for equipment…

by Michael Watson

We all like to look at nice graphic or visualization. But, as it becomes easier to create nice graphics and visualizations, some have become more art than conveying information.

by Michael Watson

IBM recently published a white paper called “The New Software-Defined Supply Chain”. We had a chance to participate in this work. The paper discusses how 3D printing (aka additive…

by Michael Watson

Dealing with variability is part of creating a lean supply chain (or lean enterprise). Ideally, you would like to eliminate the variability. However, this is not always possible. When it is…

by Michael Watson

It is clear that analytics is a very hot topic now. Companies are committed to pursuing analytics and discussing their successes. Consulting firms talk about their services to help their clients…

by Michael Watson

With the rise of big data and data in general (see here for a definition of big data), there is an increased need for people to analyze that data to turn it into information. Thomas Davenport and D.J. Patil recently wrote an…

by Michael Watson

A lot of press around analytics is focused on large and exciting projects. But, analytics can be applied to firms of any size.