Logistics Has Quietly Become One of Manufacturing’s Hardest Areas to Control Logistics costs feel unpredictable in many manufacturing environments because the activities that influence cost are still handled separately. Planning happens in one place. Shipment execution happens somewhere else. Invoice validation happens weeks later. By the time leadership reviews transport spend, the operational decisions that created
1. Assess your current situation Before you can make any changes, you need to understand your current inventory management system and identify its strengths and weaknesses. How do you track your inventory? How often do you update it? How accurate is it? How do you forecast your demand? How do you handle excess or obsolete
While speaking at an executive luncheon in Calgary recently, I had an unexpected realization. Nearly 10 years had passed, but I was still having the same conversation with oil and gas leaders: how to move from AI curiosity to AI confidence. The moment felt familiar because I had seen this challenge before. In 2017, I was leading a software
For years, sustainability programs have focused on measurement and reporting. Organizations invested heavily in collecting emissions data, calculating carbon footprints, and preparing disclosures for stakeholders and regulators. While those capabilities remain essential, the conversation is changing. The next phase of sustainability isn’t about producing better reports. It’s about making better decisions. As supply chains face ongoing disruption from geopolitical instability, tariff
1. Define your inventory problem The first step is to clearly define your inventory problem and its objectives. What are the products you are managing, and how do they differ in terms of demand, cost, lead time, and shelf life? What are the constraints and uncertainties you face, such as storage capacity, budget, demand variability,
There’s a scene that played out hundreds of times across the Star Trek franchise, and we all stopped noticing it because it felt so normal. Spock walks up to a console. He doesn’t open an app. He doesn’t click through three menus to find the right report. He doesn’t sit through onboarding. He just talks. SPOCK: “Computer, display the schematics for the warp coil
The oil and gas industry does not have a hiring problem. It has a judgment problem. Across operations, the most valuable asset walking out the door is experience rather than production capacity. According to this year’s survey of 9,000+ energy professionals across 143 countries, 48% of the workforce is now over 45, and nearly half is expected to retire within
1 Assess Reality Begin by taking a thorough inventory count to understand exactly what you have. This step might be time-consuming, but it’s crucial for regaining control. You need to identify discrepancies between your records and the actual stock on hand. Once you have accurate data, categorize your inventory based on criteria such as sales
There’s a particular kind of loss that never makes it into a board report. It’s not a single catastrophic failure or a headline-grabbing outage. It’s the maintenance window that slipped by only an hour that delayed everything after that, the production plan that was already obsolete by the time it reached the people executing it, or the senior engineer who retired last
Learned in Crossing the Chasm When looking at the adoption of AI in the workplace, the issue isn’t people building agents – almost everyone is. It’s getting the use and deployment to stick with in companies. New research from MIT shows that 95% of gen AI pilots fail to produce measurable financial impact (MIT /
