Just what is supply chain management?
It’s a question I ask myself about this time each year when I wrap up the fall conference season. After all, the major certification and trade associations representing the industry all position themselves as supply chain organizations, even though the roots of each were siloed in operations, logistics and transportation, procurement and materials handling automation. Yet, there’s now a lot of overlap. Two weeks ago, I sat through a presentation on Industrie 4.0, Germany’s vision for the NextGen manufacturing supply chain, at the MHI annual conference. That’s the kind of topic you might expect to hear at APICS, which is operations focused. Yet tonight, sitting at a table at an outdoor restaurant in San Antonio, where I just wrapped up attendance at APICS 2017, the folks at the table next to me were discussing how they were handling order fulfillment in their distribution centers, a conversation I’d otherwise expect to hear at MHI. [Full Story]
