Route to Market & Supply Chain Blog

The recent high profile cases of horsemeat DNA appearing in products marked as beef and other meats have generated a fair amount of humour but they also place great strain on FMCG Supply Chains. Thousands of Supply Chain professionals around the…

If you live in or have visited Bucharest you may well have seen one or two stray dogs hanging around the city. Well, ok more than one or two but numbers have certainly decreased over the last couple of years. A proposal was made in 2010 to organise…

Nearly the year end. Have you started planning for that party? Are the presents all sorted out? Cards ready before the final posting date? No, I thought not. All the fuss will be over before you know it and then January will see the usual raft of…

Sorry to repeat myself but Roman Abramovich is like a man who constantly returns cheese to the supermarket complaining it is mouldy and nobody is brave enough to tell him it is Roquefort. I can hardly believe I write that same text only 262 days…

People ask me what is it like working in Supply Chain and my usual reply is “wetting yourself in a dark suit. You get a warm feeling but nobody notices”. If everything is progressing well then at best you are ignored but when something goes wrong in…

FMCG/Brewing/Pharma CEO Performance Appraisal Name: This Couldbeyou Location: Anywhere Role: CEO Sector: FMCG/Brewing/Pharmaceutical Summary of Performance The local economy continues to struggle in the difficult global economic climate and perhaps…

Here at Missing Pieces/Fractured Families/Long Lost Family – delete as per local programming presented by irritating celebrity – we help people find family and friends they have not seen for many years. Often, we are a last resort after all other…

Today I am getting ready to do business in my nameless dysfunctional FMCG business. For “FMCG” you can substitute ANY business sector you wish. I pull on my tough walking boots that will do very well at hiking and climbing and dealing with any water…

The London Olympic Games 2012 are getting very close. The Olympic flame is on a tour of the UK before it finally (and hopefully on time) reaches the Olympic stadium to light the cauldron to mark the start of the games. As the flame has to pass…

How the CEO of an FMCG, Brewing or Pharmaceutical company might come to realise they need Sales & Operational Planning (S&OP). If you hear your boss singing in a locked office you now know why! With due credit to the song and original lyrics from…

There is enough disruption and discontinuity in supply chains without the necessary evil of new product development (NPD) and product change getting in the way. Just when everyone has become used to ordering, storing, picking, delivering or…

This seems like déjà-vue all over again! Only a handful of working days into the New Year and I am hearing the same old complaints about the economy and business in general being poor. Of course this is true and does not look like changing any time…

Ok, now back on line after the holidays and some demanding project work. One of the first catch-up meetings I have had this year was with an FMCG MD. No name of course, but this is a medium sized player with a broad European base and I have…

In the 1970s when organisations bought PCs it used to be said that "you never got fired for buying IBM". I wonder if the same attitude to risk is still true in 2011 when organisations buy supply chain consultancy services? Here are two recent…

Before Capello leads England to world cup glory in South Africa (you read it here second!) There is much to observe about his approach to leadership in the context of Supply Chain and S&OP in particular: Makes Decisions. At the end of the…