Etiket arşivi: sourcing software

Israeli startup takes 3D printing out of the workshop and into the factory

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In America, where dentists are turning to digital technology to provide better services for patients, refrigerator-sized machines created by Israeli startup Nexa3D print dental retainers, night guards and other accessories that used to require multiple molds of patients’ teeth and hours of lab work. The new method is faster and often results in better-fitting products.

Nexa3D’s NXE400 ultra-fast printer increases productivity by 20 times compared to competitors and is set to transform 3D printing from a tool for prototype designers to a fully fledged industrial machine operating at production scale. The step change promises to transform the 3D printing industry in the same way broadband internet replaced dial-up.

Dentistry is just a small part of Nexa3D’s business, which spans carmakers, entertainment and industry. In a matter of hours, Nexa3D’s printers in factories around the world, aided by innovative software, transform soft resin into car parts, protective face shields, drones and countless other objects.

When BMW opened its Additive Manufacturing Campus in June 2020, a NXE400 was prominently on display

Additive manufacturing is already an integral part of our worldwide production system today, and established in our digitalisation strategy,” said BMW’s Milan Nedeljković. “In the future, new technologies of this kind will shorten production times even further and allow us to benefit even more fully from the potential of toolless manufacturing.”

The sector is becoming a hot target for investors. Desktop Metal, which specializes in 3D printing of metal and composite parts, went public via a $2.5 billion SPAC in December and is now valued at more than $5 billion. Two more companies, 3D Hubs and EnvisionTEC, were acquired in January 2021.

German manufacturing giant Siemens signed a partnership deal with Nexa3D in September, and will soon begin integrating the printers into its factories.

“We are very pleased to join forces with Nexa3D and together unleash the power and potential of our products to create more resilient and sustainable supply chains,” said Tim Bell, head of Additive Manufacturing at Siemens.

source :https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/israeli-startup-takes-3d-printing-out-of-the-workshop-and-into-the-factory/

Three Uses Of Automation Within Supply Chain 4.0

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The increased availability of advanced technologies has revolutionized the traditional supply chain model. Supply Chain 4.0 responds to modern customer expectations by relying heavily on the Internet of Things (IoT), advanced robotics, big data analytics, and blockchain. These tools enable automation and thus give organizations a chance to close information gaps and optimally match supply and demand.

Industry giants like Netflix, Tesla, UPS, Amazon, and Microsoft rely heavily on automation within their supply chain to lead their respective industries. Let us take a closer look at three powerful automation use cases.

1. Managing demand uncertainty

A painful aspect of supply chain ecosystems is the demand uncertainty and the inability to accurately forecast demand. Generally, this leads to a set of performance issues, from increased operational cost to excess inventory and suboptimal production capacity. Automation tools can forecast demand, remove uncertainty from the equation, and thus improve operational efficiency at each step along the supply chain.

Big data analytics is an established tool that helps organizations manage demand uncertainty. It consists of data collection & aggregation infrastructure combined with powerful ML algorithms, designed to forecast demand based on historical (or even real-time) data. Modern storage solutions (such as data lakes) make it possible to aggregate data from a variety of sources: market trends, competitor information, and consumer preferences. 

Machine learning(ML) algorithms continually analyze this rich data to find new patterns, improve the accuracy of demand forecasting, and enhance operational efficiency. This is the recipe that Amazon uses to predict demand for a product before it is purchased and stocked in their warehouse. By examining tweets and posts on websites and social media, they understand customer sentiments about products and have a data-based way to model demand uncertainty. 

The good news is that such powerful analytics tools are not restricted to industry giants anymore. Out-of-the-box solutions (such as Amazon Forecast) make such capabilities widely available to all organizations that wish to handle demand uncertainty. 

2. Managing process uncertainties

Organizations operating in today’s supply chain industry need to handle increasingly complex logistic processes. The competitive environment, together with ever-increasing customer expectations make it imperative to minimize uncertainties across all areas of supply chain management

3. Synchronization among supply chain partners and customers

Digital supply chains are characterized by synchronization among hundreds of departments, vendors, suppliers, and customers. In order to orchestrate activities all the way from planning to execution, supply chains require information to be collected, analyzed, and utilized in real-time. A sure way to achieve a fully synchronized supply chain is to leverage the power of automation. 

source:
https://www.unite.ai/three-uses-of-automation-within-supply-chain-4-0/


Northvolt becomes 3rd battery cell supplier to BMW

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The BMW Group has signed a long-term supply contract for battery cells with the Swedish company Northvolt. The deal is worth two billion euros. Northvolt will start manufacturing the cells in 2024 in its Gigafactory in Skellefteå, currently under construction.

The Swedish company is already the third supplier to the Munich company after CATL and Samsung SDI. For BMW, the multi-supplier strategy is to establish global competition within the Group’s network, according to press information. Andreas Wendt, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG responsible for Purchasing and Supplier Network, explains this way, they ensure “we always have access to the best possible cell technology”.

BMW said nothing about the term of the contract with Northvolt, which also supplies Volkswagen. The Nortvolt-Volkswagen deal sees them building a cell factory in Salzgitter at the moment. BMW, however, only assembles the batteries for its electric vehicles at its facilities in Germany, China, the US and Thailand, but buys the cells from said partners.

source: www.electrive.com

How Procurement Can Help Reduce Supply Chain Risk

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The modern supply chain is facing some unprecedented challenges right now, and procurement is in a prime position to be able to help solve some of these issues while also reducing overall supply chain risk for their organizations. In “Risk, resilience, and rebalancing in global value chains,” McKinsey Global Institute covers a lot of ground on the supply chain risk front, but also singles out a few key realities that companies are facing and the steps they can take to mitigate risk.

After analyzing 23 different industry value chains to assess their exposure to specific types of shocks, the research firm found that supply chain “shock” varies according to industry. Aerospace and semiconductors, for example, are susceptible to cyberattacks and trade disputes, because of their high level of digitization, R&D, capital intensity and exposure to digital data flows.

Some of the key procurement-related findings in McKinsey’s report include:

  • Shocks inevitably seem to exploit the weak spots within broader value chains and specific companies. “An organization’s supply chain operations can be a source of vulnerability or resilience,” it points out, “depending on its effectiveness in monitoring risk, implementing mitigation strategies, and establishing business continuity plans.”
  • Some of these vulnerabilities are inherent to a given industry; the perishability of food and agricultural products, for example, means that the associated value chains are highly vulnerable to delivery delays and spoilage.
  • Industries with unpredictable, seasonal and cyclical demand also face particular challenges. Makers of electronics must adapt to relatively short product lifecycles, and they cannot afford to miss spikes in consumer spending during limited holiday windows.
  • Other vulnerabilities are the consequence of intentional decisions, such as how much inventory a company chooses to carry, the complexity of its product portfolio, the number of unique SKUs in its supply chain, and the amount of debt or insurance it carries. Changing these decisions can reduce—or increase—vulnerability to shocks.
  • Companies’ supplier networks vary in ways that can shape their vulnerability. For example, spending concentrated among just a few suppliers may make it easier to manage them, but it also heightens vulnerability should anything happen to them.

Complexity isn’t a Weakness

Buyers should also understand that supply chain vulnerabilities often stem from the structure of supplier networks in a given value chain. “Complexity itself is not necessarily a weakness to the extent that it provides companies with redundancies and flexibility,” McKinsey points out, “But sometimes the balance can tip. Complex networks may become opaque, obscuring vulnerabilities and interdependencies.”

For example, a large, multinational company may procure goods from hundreds of different tier-one suppliers. Each of those tier-one suppliers in turn can rely on hundreds of tier-two suppliers. “The entire supplier ecosystem associated with a large company can encompass tens of thousands of companies around the world when the deepest tiers are included,” McKinsey points out.

Finally, the number of tiers of participating suppliers can hinder visibility and make it difficult to spot emergent risks. As a result, “suppliers that are dependent on a single customer can cause issues when demand shocks cascade through a value chain,” the firm notes.

Improving Resilience

On a positive note, McKinsey says that 93% of supply chain leaders are currently taking steps to make their supply chains more resilient. Some of the strategies they’re using include:

  • Building in redundancy across suppliers
  • Nearshoring their manufacturing operations
  • Reducing the number of unique parts that they use to build their products
  • Regionalizing their supply chains

“Most companies are still in the early stages of their efforts to connect the entire value chain with a seamless flow of data,” says McKinsey, which sees digital as a vehicle that can deliver “major benefits to efficiency and transparency that are yet to be fully realized.”

source: https://www.sourcetoday.com/

Lego is making 13,000 face visors

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Denmark-based toymaker Lego recently announced on Instagram that it had begun producing protective visors for front-line healthcare workers in its home country.

The company has modified some of its molding machines to manufacture Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

This week we began to make visors at our factory in Billund for healthcare workers on the frontline in Denmark,” the company said. “We are so incredibly proud of the team who made this happen.”

The visors have a simple design, which was drafted out by Lego employees with the help of representatives from Denmark’s healthcare sector.

source
https://www.businessinsider.com/lego-goggles-protective-a-day-for-coronavirus-outbreak-ppe-2020-4

What Procurement Professionals want in 2017

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The New Year is here already, after the holiday season filled with lots of giving and sharing with employees, colleagues, friends and loved ones, it’s now time to implement new spending strategies to help you make the most of your 2017 budget. If your company is planning to up the ante on event spending next year, they need to be aware what procurement professionals are looking out for and be better prepared on how make the most out of its 2017 procurement teams.

It’s no longer news that procurement teams fuel the profitability and growth of some the world’s most successful companies, from aligning procurement’s deliverables with top business goals to understanding exactly what needs to change in procurement to drive financial results, there are several habits that organisations can establish to encourage effective procurement practices that result in value generation for the company as a whole.

Some of the Industry trends that procurement professionals tend to be leaning toward in the New Year include:

  1. The power of relationships

The ability to build strong relationships with suppliers, clients and stakeholders can contribute to success within service delivery, recruitment and the list goes on.

Too often we see organisations fail to manage their contracts and suppliers. An effective supplier management framework that appropriately aligns risk, effort and reward is a key enabler of ongoing sustainable value creation. The framework needs to include segmentation (i.e., strategic, operational and tactical), performance management framework(s) and a clear articulation of organisational accountability and responsibility. Procurement professionals should be looking to do more in this regard in order to provide a more personal and tailored approach towards procurement in 2017

  1. Online Platforms

A growing amount of procurement professionals are tapping into online platforms to help build these global relationships. Procurement professionals can leverage what’s happening in retail-related user experience to build commercial business cases to invest internally in great systems.  Systems that will improve productivity and allow organisations to capture data and move from spend analysis to predictive procurement. Platforms that are cost effective and allows for easier data capture at point of purchase for procurement professionals. These niche platforms offer similar functions to a social network but also much more

So what are these online platforms? They aren’t just the usual culprits of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Now there’s a new wave of social media which is tailored to professionals in specific industries – the niche online business network. As for the procurement industry, some of these platforms include; Procurious, Salesforce, Amazon, SAP e.t.c. Procurement professionals should seek to delve deeper into these platforms to see how best they can further build upon existing successes recorded.

  1. Global networking

It’s no secret the logistics, procurement and supply chain profession is global in nature and these niche networks allow procurers, buyers and suppliers to network with people from all corners of the globe.  The online space is no doubt a key channel for establishing business relationships with professionals from some of the world’s largest economies. With functions such as networking capabilities, industry specific news and discussion forums, these platforms create focused global communities. They provide opportunities for members to converse, network and share knowledge with like-minded peers across the globe.

  1. Tailored learning

Niche online networks are also hubs of knowledge which can be useful when fostering relationships with several stakeholders. For example, if procurement professionals want to do business in new locations or with a new supplier, they’ll need to understand their background, the market they play in and local industry issues. Sites and platforms should foster discussions groups which can help one learn about another culture or industry’s way of doing business before entering the market.

 

The value that the an efficient and effective procurement department brings to an organisation are huge not just in cost savings but also in terms of long term profitability of the business and also in promoting  sustainability business practises and majority of businesses are beginning to establish and encourage habits that can drive these benefits. While the outcome of alignment and transformation projects are different for every organisation, the end result creates a clear path for procurement to drive financial results, earn more internal budget and resources, and demonstrate to key stakeholders the immense value and critical nature of their program. Procurement professionals are constantly challenged to provide the latest innovations that are truly integrated, mobile and social-enabled in order to deliver productivity gains and raise employee engagement and compliance while leading to better supplier management and auditing.