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Industry 4.0 is the manufacturing movement that is reshaping the business of building products. Defined by unparalleled machine intelligence and connectivity, industry 4.0 introduces cyber-physical systems and IoT on the factory floor. Our modern manufacturing efforts are driving advancements in industry 4.0, bringing greater efficiency, quality and sustainability to the manufacturing process. The shift to [...]

Over the last six years, we studied the connection between business results (growth, operating margin, inventory turns and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)) and the link to company characteristics. What did we find? We consistently see that companies focused on functional excellence–a focus within a functional silo like manufacturing, transportation or distribution– or singular metrics– [...]

When it comes to supply chain professionals, most of us like to think we know the best way of doing things. Starting off with the best of intentions, we work under an unproven premise that our little supply chain foibles are typical in organizations like ours. Ignoring some consistent fault lines, however, will eventually expose [...]

In companies, there is no standard model for demand processes. It is evolving. New forms of analytics make new capabilities possible. In the traditional organization, some demand processes are sales-driven. Others are marketing-driven. However, sales-driven and marketing-driven processes are quite different from market-driven processes. Unfortunately, companies have invested money in traditional forecasting processes believing that [...]