A Software as a Solution Supply Chain provider, Kinaxis, launched a new free Benchmarking Service for companies interested in comparing their supply chain performance against others across various metrics.

The benchmarking provides a competitive comparison and ranks your company on any of 24 standard financial and operational metrics, such as cash-to-cash, inventory turns, gross margin and return on invested capital.  The service can also be used by private companies and it allows them to confidentially enter their metrics into the system to set up comparisons.

This type of tool can be very useful to a company to understand how other organizations are performing on the metrics that are most meaningful as well as identifying areas for perfomance improvement.

The Benchmarking Service is being offered at no cost to and just requires registering as a member of the free Supply Chain Expert community and then clicking on the Benchmark My Company

Kraft  Foods has eliminated more than 50 million truck miles since 2005 through a focus on transportation sustainability efforts.  The company made these sustainability improvements by shifting wheat shipments from truck to barge and by using technology to reduce costs and emissions in transportation.  

Kraft's initiative is called Project MOST (Management of Optimized Sustainable Transportation) and utilizes Oracle's Cooperative Routing which is an integrated option for Oracle's Transportation Management application.  By looking at your entire logistics network over time, Cooperative Routing has allowed Kraft to strategically examine the use of carrier and fleet resources in their supply chain.  It does this by identifying historical shipping patterns and determining optimal asset utilization, while bringing visibility to potential continuous move opportunities.

Kraft has achieved a strategic approach to transporation by mostly eliminating one-way freight with the establishment of permanent lane assignments that have improved service, reduced costs and lowered their carbon footprint.

Intel's new Atom chip costs one fifth the cost from Intel's other chips and required a new supply chain design with substantially reduced costs. They achieved this by revaluating every assumption and focusing on ways to reduce inventory levels. 

For its traditional chips, Intel operated on a nine-week order cycle time with with many order changes from their customers which led to higher inventory levels and sub optimized factories.  Intel focused on shifting to a make-to-order model with firm orders accepted and then delivered in two weeks instead of nine.

One of the challenges that Intel faced with this paradigm shift was overcoming the instilled industry perceptions about the make-to-order model.  With the success of this initiative, Intel is now looking at implementing the new approach to the traditional chip's supply chain.

http://www.scdigest.com/ASSETS/ON_TARGET/09-11-04-3.PHP?CID=2911

Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors have been gaining momentum due to their lower costs and quicker implementations.  SaaS vendors offer an on demand software deployment that allows IT resources to focus on more strategic initiatives rather spending time and money managing expensive hardware.  SaaS and cloud computing also offer improved energy efficiency and sustainability benefits. 

I read an article from Dan Gilmore of SC Digest that discusses how companies are looking for new ideas on how to use their supply chains in dealing with the downturn and how to prepare for the recovery.  Companies should consider work on projects designed to improve their supply chains so that they are more competitive as the economy improves.  Areas that companies are looking to make improvements include supply chain network redesign, supply chain reorganization, SKU-rationalization projects, aligning metrics with people and the way you deliver value to the customer.  Additionally, it makes sense to eliminate silos of optimization in an organization so that there is a holitic view and decisions are made with the entire supply chain in mind instead of optimization of one area at the expense of another. 

http://www.scdigest.com/ASSETS/ON_TARGET/09-08-31-1.PHP?CID=2682

A recent AMR Research study shows that although companies are not currently measuring their greenhouse gas emissions, they expect increased focus on green initiatives in 2010. The report surveyed 313 corporations and showed greenhouse gas emissions will be the leading initiative for 20 percent of the respondents in 2010, a higher priority than any other initiative.

The report acknowledges the recession as a factor in affecting environmental awareness and companies are linking sustainability to driving continuous improvement and adding to the bottom line. When asked to identify the most important factors when it comes to going green, the leading response was “Business Opportunities”. Sustainability as viewed by companies has shifted from a nice to have to a need to have.

http://www.amrresearch.com/Content/View.aspx?compURI=tcm:7-43922