With nearly 350 participants from across industries in Europe, the Americas and Asia, the survey provides insight into management efforts to recover from the recent financial crisis and to position supply chains as an enabler of revenue and margin growth.
“The report summarizes five key supply chain challenges with which global companies are struggling:
1) Consumers are increasingly price sensitive and less brand-loyal, resulting in commoditization and a permanent increase in supply chain volatility,
2) While most participants are looking to international customers for future market growth, few are prepared for the complexity that results from serving global customers with regionally customized products,
3) End-to-end supply chain cost optimization will be critical in the future, 4) Risk and opportunity management should span the entire supply chain, including the supply chains of key partners,
5) Existing supply chain organizations are not truly integrated or empowered—specifically, 30 percent of survey participants say that problems with the supply chain organization—such as lack of integration between product development and manufacturing functions—are standing in their way of capturing the benefits of the economic recovery.”
Via PRTM
Could there be common features in these diverse cases that could give a clue to the creative and even the “aha” moment of creative insight itself ?
Via: RoveMonteux.net
We understand the difficulty of measuring innovation success. Traditional market-focused metrics such as share, NPV and brand impact do not account for the long term benefits that investment in innovation deliver. This is particularly apparent when undertaking a technology platform strategy or investing in innovations that reduce costs. In addition, even among innovation thought leaders, there is no consensus on the best practice for measuring innovation performance.
We propose that in order for a system to effectively provide senior management with an impartial measurement of R&D program success it must have the following attributes:
Impartiality: The inner working of the measurement system must be designed in such a way that ‘gaming the system’ is both difficult and transparent.
Ease of Use: Our clients tell us that complex, fully integrated, IT systems require too much time and manpower to maintain effectively and continuously. Simple, easy-to-use tools that facilitate continuous participation are much more likely to be used effectively, and at a much lower cost.
Accurate Decision Modeling: The inner workings of an innovation measurement system must accurately reflect the organization’s values. There is a clear need for the metrics to be determined in a practical environment, not as an IT, academic, or theoretical construction. The measurement model should account for the cross-functional nature of innovation, the broad variety of metrics and sensitivity to the range of potential outcomes.
Consistency: Measuring innovation performance provides an incredibly valuable management tool, the ability to compare current and past performance. Consistent metrics and outputs provides R&D managers with tools to understand performance and continually improve. Consistency also enables alignment of global R&D efforts.
Defined Incentives: Our clients tell us that their desire to measure innovation is often part of a larger initiative to improve R&D performance. We find that successful innovation metrics have defined incentives (and disincentives) to align R&D efforts with the business’s overall strategy.
Innovation needs to measured and analyzed in order to improve the impact of R&D. We have found that Newlogic’s Portfolio Optimization via Project Selection tool is unique in that it has the attributes required for an effective R&D measurement tool.
1 – Gartner, Inc. Avoiding a Consumer Products and Retailer Collision, Steven Steutermann, Kevin Sterneckert, April 19, 2010.
A shout out to our friends at Tiax on their move to great new offices in Lexington.
“Today, there is tremendous opportunity within the manufacturing practices and processes for pharmaceutical packaging to become more sustainable. Sustainability is approachable from a holistic perspective as a way to determine how to have a positive impact throughout the supply chain, not just the raw materials or the way the product returns to the life cycle. Sustainability requires an approach that is focused on technical, environmental, and social practice.”
Via: Xconomy
- Innovative new products often require identification, assessment and integration of new suppliers
- Our approach enables the co-creation and joint R&D efforts often required to achieve innovations at the marketplace
- Newlogic’s Supply Chain Practice is expert on the challenges of creating new vendor networks that achieve business, product, and performance metrics
- We have broad experience in China and India with both first-person expertise and regional partnerships
