Route to Market & Supply Chain Blog

I had a terrible row last weekend. Everything seemed to be going well; no stress, nothing to worry about just getting along nicely then boom! There was screaming, pain and I have to admit I was close to shedding tears as the incident unfolded.…

There is your dilemna. You need to save cash towards an expensive year-end holiday but you really do not know the best place from where to take the money. Do you take it from your day to day current account which is already set up to pay the routine…

What made me think of that? Do you remember that playground game called Statues? One person is the “museum” Curator and stands at the end of a field or yard. Everyone else stands an agreed distance away from the Curator. The aim of the game is for a…

As a general rule house or office numbering usually starts with number 1 at the start of the road nearest the city or town centre. Odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right increase sequentially until the end of the road. In many…

Well I find it strange anyway. Whenever I go to see my doctor she always greets me with a cheery “good morning, how are you?” I always feel like replying “well I‘m in your clinic so there is a fair chance I need some medical advice or assistance”.…

That is an astonishing amount of food waste. Tesco in the UK has held its hands up and admitted it has generated 30,000 tonnes of food waste in the first 6 months of 2013. If that waste rate continues unabated it will reach an enormous 60.000 tonnes…

Flying stopped being fun a long time ago. To travel even the shortest distance you have to check hours before the flight and then you seem to queue endlessly until you arrive at your destination. Security checks demand your coat, shoes, belt, false…

What supply chains are meant to do has been very well documented but source, plan, make deliver disciplines are the core activities. Add in a potential warehousing and logistics role and if the company is forward thinking, a customer logistics role…

Last week was spent enjoying the weather in UK as I moved the heiress into her third new student house in 3 years. This time the house has 9 – yes nine – residents which must make it a no go area for anyone above the age of 25 unless wearing…

In my local supermarket over the weekend I noticed something I had not seen or perhaps not noticed before. On the shelf I was expecting to relieve of my weekend beer was a propped up sign saying “We are sorry your choice is not available. We are…

Another telecommunications related tale rounds off my current trilogy of customer service mishaps. I really do hope this is the last one I experience as I have been on a run of really bad luck lately. However, I suspect a long, hot and sunny UK…

I recently wrote about how an airline dented its reputation with an overly fussy interpretation of on board baggage storage rules. In my poor customer service trilogy I now turn my attention to a well known global telecoms company. I will keep the…

This has not been a great week for customer service and from some very well known companies. People say things happen in threes and this week I have had 3 unexpectedly poor customer service experiences. Disappointment and irritation is always…

Cue the famously ominous theme music, "Approaching Menace" by the British composer Neil Richardson. A hushed, shadowy, darkened studio. Contestant number one leaves his competitors in the dark and walks in a moving beam of light to the famous black…

Some time ago I wrote about the way spreadsheets were undermining expensively assembled ERP’s in FMCG, Brewing and Pharmaceutical companies. They still are, by the way. Recently, a paper on Public Debt and Austerity published by 2 eminent Harvard…