Logistics and Supply Chains - Fundamentals,Design,Operations

Align organizational and supply chain strategies by identifying customers, products, competition, and socio-economic environment, define mission and goals, and tune competitive priorities: cost, quality, time, and price.

Learn how supply chain strategy improves market knowledge, visibility, velocity, and reduces variability, using just-in-time, lean manufacturing, and better partner vocalization to curb the bullwhip effect.

Managers design focused logistics strategies by balancing costs, service levels, and delivery speed, choosing among cost leadership, product differentiation, or market niche to meet pressing needs.

Define the logistics infrastructure by selecting a structure—functional, product, hybrid, matrix, or self-managed—that aligns with strategy and is supported by systems, human resources, and culture.

Integrates supply chain partners across internal and external levels to satisfy final customers, delivering shared information, improved material flow, lower costs, and faster deliveries.

Recognize a shared aim of satisfying the final customer and replace conflict with agreement to enable external integration across the supply chain through customer relationship management.

Explore how sharing information and visibility across the supply chain enables efficient collaboration, forecasting, and replenishment. Learn how to form strategic alliances and assess partners for lasting value.

Explore demand management across make-to-stock, assemble-to-order, make-to-order, and engineer-to-order environments around the customer order decoupling point. Balance inventory with service and apply collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment.

Learn time series methods for forecasting in logistics, including trend, seasonal, cyclical, and random components, with moving averages, weighted averages, hand fitting, least squares, and seasonal indexes.

Exponential smoothing uses a moving-average forecast with alpha between 0 and 1 to weight recent demand, updating the forecast from the prior period by a fraction of the error.

Learn simple linear correlation by interpreting the correlation coefficient r (−1 to 1), its r-squared relation, and testing significance with a plasterboard shipments and construction permits example.

Assess forecast accuracy by comparing actual demand to forecast, using mean absolute deviation and tracking signals, with exponential smoothing and control charts with action limits based on standard deviation.

Explore practical demand forecasting techniques, including simple and weighted moving averages, seasonalized forecasts using trend and seasonal indexes, and exponential smoothing for inventory and production planning, with ready-to-use formulas.

Sales and operations planning aligns marketing, production, and finance to balance demand and supply, set volumes and mix, and guide the master production schedule.

Aligns demand and supply for each product family through a formal S&OP process, using monthly forecasts, demand planning, and management reviews to update the operations plan, inventory, and backlog.

Demonstrate how a chase demand operating plan guides monthly updates to production and staffing in S&OP, using the forecast, plan, and actual results.

Explains a chase demand operating plan to maintain five days of supply at the end of each month, with end-of-month inventory targets and step-by-step calculations using attached spreadsheets.

Explore the level operating plan with a constant workforce to meet forecasted demand. Calculate required production, end-of-horizon inventory, and staffing using the given data.

Apply a sales and operations planning model for an ABC company using aggregate production planning and a linear programming approach to optimize staffing, production, and inventory while avoiding back orders.

Use a solver-driven sales and operations planning model to optimize regular and overtime production, hiring, firing, and inventory under balance equations and constraints, then compare costs to actual results.

Explore master production schedule techniques, including order promising and available-to-promise, using discrete and cumulative ATP logic to align inventory, forecast, and backlog with promised shipments.

Explore the master production schedule in assemble-to-order settings, using the super bill and planning bills to manage options, safety stocks, and available-to-promise for rapid customization.

Learn how a two-level master production schedule coordinates final assembly and component production using discrete available-to-promise logic for assemble-to-order products, illustrated with 3hp tillers Max and Original.

Examine the basic material requirements planning record, including gross requirements, scheduled receipts, and projected available balance. Understand time buckets, planning horizon, lead time, and how planned order releases prevent shortages.

Explain gross to net explosion in records processing, translating product requirements into component part requirements while accounting for inventory, scheduled receipts, and snow shovel dependent demands in material requirements planning.

Explain lead time offsetting using precedent relationships to determine when each component is needed, and show how back scheduling with MRP reduces work in process and optimizes materials timing.

Link time-phased MRP records to reveal gross requirements, planned orders, and lead times for the snow shovel's top handle assembly, with back-scheduling and lot-for-lot sizing.

Examine lot sizing within MRP, using time-phased records to create discrete lot sizes, compare lot-for-lot and fixed lots, and apply safety stock and safety lead time, low-level coding, and pegging.

Explore how an MRP system design handles firm planned orders, planned order releases, service parts, pegging records, and planning horizon to stabilize materials planning and manage lead times.

Explore how MRP transaction processing replans activities when changes occur, including launching planned orders, allocating raw materials, and rescheduling due dates across multi-level bill of materials.

Explore how the MRP system converts the master production schedule into a time-phased plan of scheduled receipts and planned orders, and examine economic order quantity and other lot sizing strategies.

Apply EOQ-based economic time between orders and periodic order quantity to reduce inventory carrying costs and total costs, with part period balancing offering a fuller use of the requirements schedule.

Learn how small changes in the master production schedule amplify through MRP, causing nervousness in multi-level structures, and apply stability, selective lot sizing, and firm planned orders to dampen it.

Link firms in the supply chain with DRP by carrying demand information between receiving and supply points and returning supply information, coordinating inventory across warehouses and distribution centers.

Explore DRP techniques and basic DRP records that link customer demand to company decisions. See how forecast requirements, in transit shipments, and safety stock shape planned shipments and lead times.

Manage day-to-day operations by updating DRP records with actual demand and receipts, and stabilize planning by using firm planned orders or error addback to reflect current demand.

Explore DRP management within an integrated manufacturing planning and control system, highlighting conflicts affecting inventory, customer service, and total costs. Align linkages across functions and prioritize rapid, just-in-time responsiveness.

Match capacity to forecasted demand with a six-step process: forecast demand, assess capacity, identify mismatches, propose alternative plans, choose the best, and implement and monitor.

Plan capacity using multiple methods—forecast demand, identify bottlenecks, and generate alternative plans through negotiation, heuristics, adjustments, spreadsheets, graphical analysis, simulation, expert systems, and mathematical models, guided by cost-benefit trade-offs.

Explore capacity planning in supply chains, balancing demand with discrete capacity changes and a cushion against shortages through supply management, demand management, and measured expansions.

Analyze how capacity varies over time due to random effects and systematic changes like learning curves and aging equipment, and optimize maintenance and replacement timing to minimize total costs.

Drive campaigns with data and closed-loop management to plan, segment, schedule, and refine marketing efforts using relational databases and data warehouses for improved response and revenue.

Explore cross-selling and up-selling strategies to boost customer value and retention through data-driven marketing automation. Understand churn risk, customer profitability, and channel management for targeted campaigns.

Explore how sales force automation transforms customer relationship management across marketing, sales, and support, automating lead, contact, and activity management to boost productivity and close rates.

Supply management significantly affects a firm's bottom line by influencing sales and costs through procurement. Strategic supply chain practices and total cost of ownership improvements enhance profitability and competitiveness.

Examine buyer–supplier relationship types, from transactional to collaborative and alliance models. Learn how collaborative and alliance links create win–win outcomes, lower total costs, and improve quality and time to market.

Identify user material needs, examine purchase requests, and decide make-or-buy options; describe materials and evaluate suppliers through bids to select the best, ensuring timely, high-quality deliveries.

Assess make-or-buy decisions by comparing total cost of ownership and production capacity, then weigh factors like control, quality, supplier reliability, and long-term capacity to decide make in-house or buy.

Explore total cost components: acquisition costs, ownership costs, and post-ownership costs. Learn how purchase price, planning, quality, taxes, and cycle times influence total cost of ownership.

Compare total cost of ownership and net present value analyses to estimate acquisition, operating, and post-ownership costs, using present value and discount rate to guide investment choices.

Identify and select a well-qualified supplier who can guarantee quality, on-time delivery, and favorable terms, then monitor performance and decide between single or multi-sourcing strategies.

Link e-procurement to partners' information systems to automate orders and delivery, delivering cost savings and global supplier access. Explore b2b and b2c models, e-marketplaces, vertical platforms, and reverse auctions.

Explore the 3 m model - non-critical, bottleneck, strategic materials - showing how procurement effort matches value, with supplier ratings, repeat/blanket orders, and price lists, special quotations, negotiation, and commodity pricing.

Learn the economic order quantity model, balancing reorder costs and holding costs to determine the optimal order size Q that minimizes total cost, with demand D and no shortages.

Compute the economic order quantity of 50 and the reorder level of 40 from a two-week lead time and constant demand, then adjust when lead time exceeds stock cycle.

Explore the economic order quantity and its sensitivity, showing variable costs stay near the minimum within 64%–156% of EOQ, and how combining orders reduces reorder costs.

Evaluate a region’s attractiveness by balancing factor conditions, demand conditions, supporting industries, and company strategy with proximity to customers, suppliers, and competitors.

Compare infinite set and feasible set location approaches, using the center of gravity of demand to balance costs to customers and suppliers, with real-world Alberta examples.

Explore scoring models for location decisions, weighing infrastructure, proximity to customers, suppliers, climate, and accessibility using a five-step method to compare sites.