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The Latest News and Thoughts from the RSI Team
Risk Mitigation with a Dual-Source Supply Base Data Modeling
Many new trends in sourcing include the new term Sure-Shoring. This means a supply chain may have multiple sources close to home and across the world. With all supply chains, there is potential for geo-political instability, natural disasters, or even a giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal to affect the day to day.
Did you hear the joke about the Late Shipment?
Puns aside, Service level in supply chain terms means what percentage you want to deliver on time to the customer. In simpler terms, is the product or service there when a customer needs it. A life saving medicine needs to be available at every time of day. A candy bar might not. Every supply chain manager wants to have a 100% service level, each business needs to make a decision on what is acceptable to the customer, for example, the candy bar might be at 75% and the medical equipment would be at 99%. This means that the material for the medical equipment would be available 99/100 and there would be one day where it isn’t available.
Supply Chain Seasonality - Where Did All of the Sun Screen Go?!
Put simply, supply chain seasonality is the change in demand for products by season. Right now, products related to summer weather are popular! Also, we’re probably not going to buy any coats, sweaters, or snow boots anytime soon unless we want them to gather dust for the next few months.
Can Right Sized Inventory Optimize Kanban Systems?
Kanban directly translates to signboard. It was popularized by Toyota and more directly translates as a signal. At RSI we interpret that as a signal to order! This means there is a trigger to replenish in a certain amount at a given lead time.
Are You Overburdening Workers and Introducing Risk?
Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic I’d had countless conversations with supply chain executives across the globe discussing how they were pivoting operations to deal with the impact. It was clear that due to unavoidable resource reductions, most or all supply chain professionals were being overloaded with additional responsibilities.
Reorder Points, Minimum Order Quantities, and Toilet Paper?
One of the challenges in supply chain is often-times we use the same terms to describe different things. “Safety Stock” to one person or company might be a “Reorder Point” to another. Other people might describe a “Minimum Quantity” when what they are really describing is a “Safety Stock”. That is why it’s critically important at Right Sized Inventory (RSI), when we first meet with clients, to clearly define terms and vocabulary.
Will Right Sized Inventory Keep my Data Secure?
Our first commitment to data security is found in our choice of a cloud services provider. Our service runs with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Amazon has a strong commitment to cloud security. Its’ cloud is trusted by many Fortune 500 companies and many if not all of the most security sensitive industries including banking and healthcare.
Schedule a Call
Find out if Right Sized Inventory is right for your business and inventory needs. Set up a call with one of our team and we’ll walk you through a demo, identify trouble spots in your business, and see how implementing RSI can transform your business through data-driven inventory optimization.