Lean Supply Chain Management Blog

The Asset Disposition Control Tower

The recent debates and cuts due to the sequestration has brought to light the understanding that having fewer people on duty in the air traffic control towers will mean fewer planes in the air and more travelers sitting in airports. 

Does your supply chain visibility rely on the insights of one person?

When talking with operations managers at telecom companies they many times feel overwhelmed by the number of departments that they have to report the most up to date information to. A lot of people are depending on them for the latest market insights and data so they can make asset disposition decisions quickly.

It's time to erase the line in the sand

Every Time You Move an Asset, You Lose Money

Have you ever heated your house with wood? Growing up, my family did and while it may be part of the rustic New England charm, handling it wasn't exactly my favorite chore. It always arrived in a big pile at the head of the driveway, which meant it had to be sorted, stacked and somehow shielded against moisture (some logs would get so wet they were useless). Getting the wood inside meant another round of carrying and stacking - and then of course there's an entire process which took the wood from the forest to the driveway to begin with. A lot of time, a lot of energy and a lot of resources...especially when winter came and went, and a corner of the backyard still had a stack of wood four rows high.

How Would Wall Street Make Asset Recovery and Disposition Decisions?

Before the internet and companies like e-Trade, everyone who wanted to buy or sell in the financial markets had to go through an intermediary stock broker to execute trades. They were the only ones who had access to the type of market intelligence required to make well-informed buy and/or sell decisions.

An example of the what strategic asset management DOESN'T look like.

Why is managing vendor relationships so difficult?

I first heard the term Keiretsu in the mid-90’s with eyes fixed on Japan’s mastery of process efficiency and productivity within complex organizations. The ERP world was buzzing, and our CEO at the time was delighted in applying the theories of Keiretsu to our company and its diverse ecosystem of solution partners. The very sound of the word still conjures for me a picture of an inherently successful, harmonious and Zen-like network of symbiotic business relationships.

Having just stumbled across the word again 15 years later, I’ve learned there are two types of keiretsu: vertical and horizontal. Vertical keiretsu illustrates the organization and relationships within a company (for example all factors of production of a certain product will be connected), while a horizontal keiretsu shows relationships between entities and industries, normally centered on a bank or trading company. Both are complexly woven together and self-sustain each other. A very good thing...exactly like it sounds.

But the truth is that global service and supply chains are far from optimal. With an appetite for greater agility and financial performance, today’s Telecom executives need help optimizing processes to drive profit from managed services. Without shared supply chain visibility into the flow of network assets in reverse logistics, the integration points between manufacturers, outsourcing partners and the end customers are very hard to connect, and efficiency is dubious at best.

Vendor Management Best Practices On the Horizon

What’s needed is a collaborative view that bridges the information gaps, bringing together internal and external asset inventory data to make it easily available to buyers, planners and others. (Some will tell us that their ERP system handles this, yet they continue to lose tens of millions each year to service chain inefficiency, inability to extend product lifecycles or recover full market value for unused assets.)

How to Make Better Asset Recovery Decisions

Can there be anything more frustrating than running around the house in the morning looking for your car keys only to find them sitting on the kitchen table – exactly where you left them the night before? That’s a direct byproduct of discursive and distracted thinking. In the early stages of client engagements we often see similar thought patterns plaguing carrier and OEM equipment repair strategies.

Over the years, a friend of mine’s garage has morphed into a really big storage space. Holiday decorations, toys, old furniture…you name it and it’s there. What’s amazing is that despite the number of boxes and containers, he can put his finger on what he’s looking for almost instantly. It’s uncanny. He just knows where everything is.

It’s the Asset Lifecycle Data that Matters the Most

Debbie Kish, part of Gartner’s carrier network infrastructure research team, visited us for a strategy session that included a tour of our warehouse here in Portsmouth. Walking among equipment originating from so many different vendors and geographies, it was easy to demonstrate why asset intelligence has become so valuable to a global supply chain. Our warehouse is pretty big – covering about 2 acres – but it’s dwarfed in comparison to those maintained by large regional and global telecom companies.