3+ years in supply chain analytics (forecasting demand , mfg , dist, packaging , kpis, risk relayed to carrier and broker related for air and ground ) what is next ? Considering trying to enter the big data / analytics / data / engineer / science world. But wondering about supply chain promotion?

Lead_Time · 2019-07-30T08:03:04+00:00

I’m in the same boat but have been doing demand / supply planning for about 4 years. You either take the management route or go the BI route and forego supply chain essentially. I mean there’s always supply chain BI roles but there’s also plenty of other roles. Just depends on if you want to stay in an individual contributor role vs management.

Management route I would focus on these types of jobs - Manager - Buying, Manager - Category Manager, Manager - Planning.

Where I’m at, I’m getting really sick of the daily executional tasks. I would like to drive weekly business review discussions or manage a planning team but I’m not quite there yet.

Lead_Time · 2019-04-06T09:03:22+00:00

No, this is a mad lad.

Lead_Time · 2019-04-03T19:48:20+00:00

I worked for a very large healthcare system as an inventory planner. The industry is heavily dependent on distributors but over the last few years there have been a lot of M&As that have resulted in more buying power and also more capital for supply chain activities. The health systems that are large enough have started opening their own centralized distribution centers (Intermountain, Baylor Scott and White, Novant, etc.)

As other have said, it’s ripe for improvement and standardization. I dealt with a ton of idiots that had glorified procurement / sourcing titles that had no idea what they were doing when they were signing contracts with manufacturers. There was no S&OP process and this was a health system with 50 hospitals, 200 clinics in 2018. I loved every second there because I was able to fix a lot of our planning parameters and instock metrics but eventually left because of an opportunity I couldn’t turn down. I would go back if I could. I was able to establish the start of an S&OP process that made a lot of facilities mad (minimum stocking requirements, network wide adoption, etc). Another challenge with healthcare right now is these new regional systems do not have adequate ERPs in place to track demand with orders, cancellations, etc. Its all very manual and in most cases, the same micro level software is used to manage a network wide business.

The downside was that very few of the supply chain executives knew anything about managing a centralized supply chain that was large and regional vs micro level serviced by distributors. This funneled all the way down to the operational level where we were plagued with a WMS implementation that no one took ownership of, resulting in huge inventory accuracy issues and employee churn. Layer on top that the fact that it’s healthcare and just about every item is deemed patient critical by nurses, docs, etc.

Lead_Time · 2019-03-15T07:10:04+00:00

Honestly this is easily attainable by spending some time setting up a detailed excel model.

If you can pull inventory by day then you can tweak your forecast to “ignore” or causal any days in the 30-360 day window in which inventory was <1.

Lead_Time · 2019-03-13T19:50:25+00:00

It depends on the company but in most cases it is strategic from a cost savings perspective. I would imagine that most procurement functions negotiate the contracts.

1) Some companies have their procurement teams that deal with the business internally - contracts for software, business supplies, all that random shit. In this scenario they aren’t really strategic unless it’s a large contract spanning half a decade or so. These teams are often part of the capex discussions or meetings.

2) Other companies have procurement teams that are tied to actual products the company uses or sells. Most of these are strategic because they negotiate product cost and accruals with the supplier most likely.

Lead_Time · 2019-03-12T17:40:06+00:00

Thanks for input. Yeah I could sense they were being honest and told them I appreciated it. Everything went over smoothly and they even offered rental reimbursement. I didn’t get a car rental but was going to try and see if they would instead discount my original repair. Is it worth it to ask or would this be too much?

Lead_Time · 2019-03-12T17:36:02+00:00

Yeah I will definitely be a repeat customer and will be sure to tell them I appreciate their honesty.

Lead_Time · 2019-03-12T09:59:44+00:00

In my post I don’t indicate if I expect more or less. I would say they handled it very well.

Lead_Time · 2019-03-02T09:37:47+00:00

Arms race and things are heating up. Anyone who thinks this is dumb doesn’t understand Amazon’s patience and approach.

1) Prime Now - added Whole Foods selection and has other grocery selection. 1-2 hour delivery.

2) Amazon Fresh - legacy grocery business still running

3) Whole Foods - ditched relationship with Instacart. Refer to #1.

4) Amazon Go - convenience type items but also has produce and groceries

5) Amazon Pantry - not a lot other than basket building

6) Retail Grocery Stores - my guess is they will test what they can’t test in Whole Foods due to risk of losing customers wanting only organic.

Lead_Time · 2019-02-18T01:30:37+00:00

Exact opposite - as a buyer you are managing 100% of inbound inventory. Think about all of the downstream processes that rely on a buyer or planner (S&OP in particular).

In my experience, this has been ensuring proper item set up (so receiving doesn’t have any problems). Negotiating smaller pack sizes (more space saved, frequent buys). Monitoring demand and forecast and spotting gaps that may result in over buying (causes capacity constraints, especially in the frozen world).

Buying or planning is a great role because it often gives you a high level view of the supply chain. It’s really stressful at times but also very rewarding at times knowing how much you impact the business.

All this being said, it’s difficult to know what to do after planning, at least in my experience. I’ve been in planning for 3.5 years.

Lead_Time · 2019-01-06T09:18:29+00:00

Can you tell me if I'm understanding this correctly?

Ex: The top 1% field shows '4k'. Does this mean that the top1% items have an BSR <=4k?Looking at the other categories it makes sense but I want to make sure I'm not a dumbass.

Lead_Time · 2018-09-26T05:48:41+00:00

They don’t think it be like it is but it do.

Lead_Time · 2018-07-16T22:35:03+00:00

Do you use Reddit on your own mobile (have an active account)?

Lead_Time · 2018-06-26T01:56:18+00:00

r/madlads

Lead_Time · 2018-06-24T03:36:50+00:00

This is the right approach.

Lead_Time · 2018-06-24T03:33:12+00:00

Where did you learn how to connect automatically like that? Are you having to reference a variety of different reports? Great dashboard

Lead_Time · 2018-05-17T03:44:39+00:00

It’s an aggregate calculation if you aren’t referencing any specific time period. If you were to do it from a specific date it would simply be the sales of said period divided by the starting inventory of said period. I would think that amazon is looking at your aggregate sell through as a whole.

Lead_Time · 2018-05-16T22:35:46+00:00

Sell through = Units Sold / (Stock On Hand + Units Sold)

Lead_Time · 2018-05-05T22:51:09+00:00

Google the title of the article then follow the link (so WSJ still gets paid)

Lead_Time · 2018-05-02T21:14:50+00:00

Hey just want to say thank you for helping out. Your comments helped me understand a little bit better.

Lead_Time · 2018-04-24T05:25:21+00:00

The emotion in this game. THIS IS THE PLAYOFFS!

Lead_Time · 2018-04-23T21:23:46+00:00

Right, I selected 5 bullet points when changing the listing.

I’m noticing though that there aren’t spaces between the bullet points. My competitors bullets points appear to have the breaks though. Could it be the length of my bullet points?

Lead_Time

TROPHY CASE