With the year’s end in sight, eKNOWtion would like to extend warm holiday greetings to you. We look back on another twelve months of great work with our business partners across Europe. The eKNOWtion team is grateful for the opportunity our clients and alliance companies have provided and proud of the results that together we have delivered. In 2005 we will build on that success as we extend our Supply Chain and Knowledge Management practices to the U.S.   

We leave you with an interactive edition of eKNOWtion News including an interview with Peter Bolstorff, respected Supply Chain practitioner and author of Supply Chain Excellence, an excerpt from a new report highlighting the “Devastating Effect of Supply Chain Disruptions on Long-term Profitability and Shareholder Value” by Dr. Vinod Singhal from Georgia Institute of Technology and finally an invitation to participate in a Knowledge Management survey designed to provide our readership with new insights in this field. Your feedback on eKNOWtion News is encouraged as we strive to publish content that brings value to you and your company. Enjoy the fruits of your labor with friends and family this season and our best wishes for the New Year.  

Send your comments to: editors@eKNOWtion.com   

eKNOWtion remains committed to Unlocking Performance. 

Kind Regards,
Douglas & Kathleen.

Interview - with Peter Bolstorff  
Author of Supply Chain Excellence

Dramatic Improvement Using the SCOR Model

eKNOWtion: Peter - thanks for providing your insight to our eKNOWtion News readers. Let’s run through some questions we believe are on the minds of those interested in dramatically improving their company’s Supply Chain.

Peter: Continually improving supply chain performance at a rapid pace is definitely required to excel in today’s business environment. Supply Chain Excellence is more about the journey then the status.

eKNOWtion: If we consider that every company may be at a different level in their supply chain maturity how does one achieve “Supply Chain Excellence”?

Peter: There are three basic factors of supply chain performance that affect all companies: Supply Chain Goals-Strategy, Supply Chain Design, and Supply Chain Measurement. To complicate matters there are also 5 influencers of performance in supply chain including Your Trading Partners, Your Organization, Your Processes, Your People, and Your Technology.  

Download the full Interview here  (193kb) 

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NEW STUDY -   By Georgia Institute of Technology Professor, Vinod Singhal and University of Western Ontario Professor, Kevin Hendricks 

The Devastating Effect of Supply Chain Disruptions on Long-term Profitability and Shareholder Value

Supply chain professionals intuitively know there is a strong linkage between supply chain performance and corporate financial performance. But they have not been able to quantify their intuition into hard facts that would get the attention of hard-edged number lovers such as CEO’s and CFO’s. A new report by Kevin Hendricks of Richard Ivey School of Business at The University of Western Ontario and Vinod Singhal of College of Management at Georgia Institute of Technology now provides the evidence that supply chain executives have been looking for. Kevin and Vinod looked at nearly 800 instances of supply chain disruptions that caused production and shipment delays and estimated the long-term financial implications of supply chain disruptions. The effects of disruptions are staggering. 

Some of the key findings are:

• Disruptions have a significant negative effect on profitability. In the year leading to the disruption, the average effect is 107 % drop in operating income, 93% drop in return on assets, 7 % lower sales growth, and 11 % growth in cost.

• Over a three year time period around the disruption, disruption experiencing firms report 33 to 40% lower stock returns relative to their competition.

• In the year after the disruption the share price volatility is 13.50% higher when compared to the volatility in the year before the disruption.

• Disruptions have a debilitating affect on performance as firms do not quickly recover from disruptions. Firms continue to operate for at least two years at a lower performance level after experiencing disruptions.  

Download the full Article here    (129kb)

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Article - Knowledge Management  By Kathleen Geraghty 

Knowledge Management: Measuring up?

How does your Knowledge Management stack up against other companies? Does your company make the most of their knowledge? More importantly do your customers think your company knows enough about the right things? Throughout the Information Age we have been told that knowledge will be a determining factor in our ability to compete. The business prophets might just be right this time as the evidence becomes more visible in our networked business communities. 

Companies win orders based on the ability to anticipate and satisfy customer requirements. Often that requirement is providing information in the form of technical specifications, application experience, lead time to global corners before the question is asked. While every customer is unique there are often similarities or patterns in their questions and expectations. The ability to aggregate the knowledge and make that accessible to customers creates a sense of confidence and competence value. At the same time organizations with faster product development life cycles or globally harmonized customer interaction are delivering more and as a result coming out ahead. When questioned on the source of their advantage, consistently these companies describe how knowledge transfer between people, departments and regions is the fuel driving success

 If Knowledge is what lies between a problem and the solution, just how much time, money and effort do successful companies commit to ensuring the answers are in the right place? Preferred Knowledge Management mediums, critical success factors, common barriers and valued benefits are indicators we want to provide our readers seeking a competitive advantage in today’s economy. Do you have ten minutes to reply to a simple survey designed to answer those questions for you?

Knowledge Management begins with a culture of sharing information. Your anonymous response will be included in a free report available to eKNOWtion News subscribers. Understanding how you measure up in the area of Knowledge Management is the equivalent of putting the key in the door of Unlocking Performance.  (See link below)

How do you measure up in Knowledge management ?  Take the Survey

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Supply Chain World - North America Conference 2005

eKNOWtion is pleased to announce Optiant Vice-President of Marketing, Jim Lawson will be speaking at this years event entitled: "Enabling Profitable Customer Satisfaction through Supply-Chain Integration"

For more information regarding this exciting event, email us at:

scworld_NA@eKNOWtion.com

 May 26-27, 2005

Supply Chain World - Europe 2005

Copenhagen, Denmark

The Supply Chain Council announces their next annual conference. The preliminary program is now available for the event entitled "Exchanging Knowledge: Coping with Supply Chain Risks"

Register for this event

Special Offer

QPR offers eKNOWtion News readers a Free Trial of their latest industry leading software

more about QPR's ProcessGuide

more about QPR's Balanced ScorCard

FREE SCOR Webinar

SCOR Project Roadmap

This course, designed as your first exposure to the SCOR Project Roadmap as described in Supply Chain Excellence. Specifically this webinar will provide an overview of both the SCOR process framework and major milestones in the project roadmap. The Powerpoint and Event Recording will be made available after the session.

Register