Resilient Supply Chain— stories and strategies that keep business moving

Send me a message I am on the advisory board of a US based startup called LocatorX . LocatorX helps organisations track goods, verify their authenticity, and enhance customer engagement. I have put off having anyone from LocatorX on the podcast up until now to avoid being seen as favouring them, but now that I have had other startups such as CakeBoxx , Polte , and Amply Power , amongst others on t...

Send me a message LiFi has some very intriguing uses for supply chain, so when I had a chance to catch up with David Soos , the Go To Market Leader LiFi for Industry for Signify (the former Philips Lighting), I jumped at it! If you haven't heard of LiFi before now, I wouldn't be surprised as it is quite a new technology. Essentially it is a way to use visible light for data communication...

Send me a message This is a short episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast just to let you know that I will be taking a break for most of August, but I have left a few episodes to auto-publish in my absence (including this one!). I already have some great episodes lined up for September, so don't touch that dial (unsubscribe button!), enjoy the next couple of episodes, and I'll see yo...

Send me a message I realised recently that I haven't had any episodes of this podcast (58 so far including this one!) dedicated to talking about security - my bad! So then when I recently came across Michael Stolarczyk, SVP at Cakeboxx Technologies , and author of the book Logical Logistics – A Common Sense Primer for your Supply Chain I asked if he'd be interested in coming on the podca...

Send me a message I was chatting with Richard Howells ( @HowellsRichard on Twitter) recently on the topic of how the current coronavirus pandemic is affecting consumer behaviour, and how this is having huge knock-on implications for supply chains. Richard, who leads thought leadership for supply chain at SAP, said that this would make for a great topic for the podcast, so I said "let's d...

Send me a message I messed up! I had a scheduling snafu which meant I don't have a guest for today's show, so you are stuck with me (!). Now, I know next to nothing about supply chains, so instead I recorded this episode about how I discovered a great supply chain community over on Reddit . It being Reddit, the demographic over there tends to skew younger, but it is an excellent place to...

Send me a message In this the 55th episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, and I spoke with Dr Heather Krieger the Principal Data Scientist at Savi Technology . The last episode of the podcast where I chatted with David Vallejo about analytics proved to be very popular, so I thought a follow-up episode on the topic of prescriptive analytics would be of interest. Heather brought me up-to-speed...

Send me a message I was chatting with David Vallejo ( @sapvallejo on Twitter) recently planning our podcast on The Future of Business Planning in Supply Chain which we published earlier this week when I happened to mention that Reddit user Omkarpalkar had asked me to do a podcast around analytics. David said he'd be happy to talk about analytics seeing as analytics are used a lot in business...

Send me a message I was chatting with David Vallejo ( @sapvallejo on Twitter) recently when the topic of where is Business Planning going came up. David outlined a vision for the future of Business Planning that I hadn't heard before, so I asked him to come on the podcast to share it. He agreed, and we had a fascinating look at Business Planning, where it is today, what needs to change, and w...

Send me a message I came across two excellent articles on Industry 4.0 recently in the Future Factory blog (a great blog if you haven't come across it). The first was What is the future for Industry 4.0 in the post Covid-19 paradigm? and the second was The key to manufacturing recovery and Industry 4.0 adoption: The advice of Henry Ford . It turned out both were written by a colleague I had n...

Send me a message I have interactions from people associated with startup companies on a reasonably regular basis, and often get asked the same question, "As a startup, how can I engage with SAP?" As the founder or co-founder of a number of startups myself, I can well sympathise with this sentiment - breaking in to large enterprises can be daunting, and the organisations themselves can b...

Send me a message Today is a very special edition of the podcast. This is the 50th episode of the podcast, and I'm publishing it on Friday July 3rd (not Friday July 2nd as I inadvertently said in the podcast!), and so to celebrate, I invited back onto the podcast Marcell Vollmer ( Twitter , Instagram ). Marcell was my guest on the very first episode of this podcast , and so I thought it would...

Send me a message I was asked recently to feature Inventory Managment in an episode of the podcast, so I reached out to Deborah Dull ( website , Twitter , Instagram ) because a) she and her co-host Sheri Hinesh are excellent podcasters in their own right , and b) because she told me in a previous episode of this podcast that she loves talking about Inventory Management (hey, who am I to judge? 😉)...

Send me a message I published a post about this podcast on Reddit's Supply Chain subreddit recently and a commenter on my post asked me to do an episode on End-toEnd visibility in Supply Chains . I hadn't done an episode on end to end visibility, so I thought, "Why not?" I asked around for someone who could speak knowledgeably about this topic and Vishnu Arcot came highly recom...

Send me a message It is June 2020, Pride Month , and with the growing attention that the Black Lives Matter movement is receiving, I thought it would be timely to have an episode of this podcast dedicated to the importance of Diversity and inclusion in supply chain. With that in mind I invited my colleague Miguel Castro to come on the show to discuss the importance of Diversity and Inclusion, both...

Send me a message This is the 46th episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, and I spoke with Rushil Goel. Rushil is Vice President and General Manager Fleet Management at Samsara . Samsara are an Industrial IoT company with over 15,000 customers around the world. Much of their work in data capture is in the areas of vehicle/driver data, and also in industrial process controls. Recently Samsara...

Send me a message On this the 45th episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I spoke with Philip Melchiors . Philip is Head of Global Planning at Velux . Velux is a family owned company with 14,000 employees, net revenue just under €3bn, headquartered in Denmark but with operations all over the world. I was curious to know how people being required to stay home impacted on their desire for home...

Send me a message On this the 44th episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I spoke with Ed Chao . Ed is the CEO of Polte - Polte are a company that offers IoT location services with their Cloud Location over Cellular (C-LoC) technology. With the increasing importance of location technologies, Polte's unique take on it, and their recent Polte Proximity announcement (a Mobile IoT Physical...

Send me a message On this episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I spoke with Chris Wolfe . Chris is the CEO of PowerFleet - a global mobile asset solution provider. PowerFleet helps some of the world's largest organisation manage their fleets of trucks, forklifts, containers, and cars ensuring their safety, and efficiency Chris has a rich history in this space, some of which I managed...

Send me a message On this episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I spoke with Richard Kirker . Richard is the Global Solution Lead for Extended Warehouse Management at SAP . Warehouse management is an area I know very little about (as will become quickly obvious as you listen to the podcast), and SAP is announcing an offer related to pop-up warehouses, something I know even less about (!), s...

Send me a message On this episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I spoke with Christian Piller . Christian  is Vice President of Value Engineering at project44 (appropriately known as @freightpipes on Twitter). project44 is a US based company operating globally who bill themselves as "the world's leading Advanced Visibility Platform for shippers and third-party logistics firms&quot...

Send me a message On this episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I spoke with Simon Lonsdale , co-founder and head of sales and strategy for Amply Power ( @AmplyPower on Twitter). Amply is a US based company in the commercial fleet space, specialising in managing the fuelling of electric vehicles (be they cars, vans, trucks, buses, or any other type of commercial electric vehicle). Simon spo...

Send me a message On this, the fourth edition of the Women in Supply Chain themed series of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I spoke with Isabelle Leclerc . Isabelle has worked in Supply Chain for over 20 years in a number of senior roles, and currently she is Vice President Supply Chain at Cascades . Cascades is a $5bn packaging and paper products company based near Montreal, Canada and they are...

Send me a message On this, the 9th episode of the Digital Supply Chain series themed on Industry 4.0, I wanted to have a chat with someone who had successfully implemented an Industry 4.0 project. I reached out to Patrick-Benjamin Bök the VP of Global Digitalization for industrial connectivity manufacturer Weidmüller ( Weidmüller on LinkedIn) because I was aware they had recently embarked on such...

Send me a message On this, the 8th episode of the Digital Supply Chain series themed on Industry 4.0, I wanted to have a chat with Nils Herzberg . Nils is the Global Head of Strategic Partnerships and Industry 4.0 for Digital Supply Chain at SAP. Why did I want to talk with Nils? Well, several of the previous Industry 4.0 episodes have alluded to the importance of partnerships and the ecosystem, s...