Electronics manufacturers such as Entech Electronics have had to beef up their supply chain and purchasing teams to meet the challenges of a global shortage of electronic components. Yaser Darban explains what companies can do to weather the shortage.

As the world recovers from a pandemic, another threat looms for manufacturers – a global shortage of components. So when companies like Apple say that a chip shortage can cause a loss of $3 billion to $4 billion, it makes us wonder how even industry leaders didn’t foresee it.

The global chip shortage didn’t come without its warnings, which many industry leaders failed to heed.

Preparing for global component shortages. Photo: Entech ElectronicsProjections say that the global chip shortage will last at least another 12 to 24 months, but there are ways in which businesses can mitigate the problem to manage the crisis better.

At WithoutWire, we've seen dramatic changes in our history. Paper transitioned to computers, then to smartphones, and beyond. With artificial intelligence, things are evolving quickly; it requires us to start thinking differently about how we connect as a business. Whether you're privy to it or not, decoupled systems are here to stay. IT projects and software implementations, and integration have left many people with headaches, and we're here to help you avoid them. As a company, WithoutWire has had the privilege of being on the frontline of changes in technology. Payroll, HR, marketing, sales, customer service—all good examples of platforms that now live outside of the financial operations engine known as an ERP, and despite the critical nature of the software applications, they are now integrated into an ERP—not buried inside of it. These functional operations are now independent and creating new and innovative competitive advantages for their adopters.   

How important is it to meet the expectations of a promised ship date? 
 
The answer, to most, is complex. Customer expectations are at an all-time high, and thus, the importance of promise-ship dates is also. Just recently, a distributor's primary concern was big-box retailers. In the 21st century, however, you need to include next-day shipping orders based online play just as big of a part. 
 
Not meeting your promise dates can be a reason your company loses its edge. If you're working with promise dates with distributors like Target, Wal-Mart, or Amazon, there are severe penalties if you don't get your product there in a timely fashion. So, your business needs to focus on specific pick orders and the importance of allocating products to those.

Damned if you do—damned if you don’t 
It’s a common enough phrase, and for most companies today, they are really feeling it in the tech sector. Whether you’re a manufacturing, distribution, or a field service operation, ERP + WMS integration into 21st century tech is both difficult, and necessary. We’re going to cover the “what ifs” in the decision-making process, and go over suggestions. 

LONDON (Reuters) - Global supply chains have been emptied as the epidemic and infection controls have encouraged a massive diversion of consumer spending from services to merchandise, especially long-lived durable goods.

Rebuilding operational inventories all along the manufacturing and distribution chain will keep manufacturers and commodity producers exceptionally busy and put upward pressure on prices through at least the end of the year.

In the United States, real consumer spending in the first quarter of 2021 was roughly the same as in the fourth quarter of 2019, the last full three-month period before the first wave of the epidemic arrived.

Site transfers, if you're not familiar with the term, really revolves around the movement and requesting of inventory from one location to another, typically moving it over some significant amount of distance or changing of hands between who is managing it at one location, to another group or people that are managing it at a destination location.

There can be quite a variety around how that is all accomplished. But in general, it is the tracking, monitoring, picking and receiving of all those materials from one site to another.

Sometimes that can be over the ocean, in shipping carriers or as an in-transit location from overseas as well.  
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Support your team.

How can you help your inventory team improve using digital technology? When it comes down to it, we should all focus on one question: How much inventory do we truly need to keep on the books to run a successful business? 
 
An inventory team works best when it can ensure that they can find accuracy in the information and that they can adequately keep inventory that you need—in stock—when it's needed. That means we are always trying to maintain a better quality of customer service, and make sure that we have enough raw materials to meet the needs of production. 
 
Digital technologies include everything from a back-end record-keeping system to the barcode-scanning technology that identifies products. What we’re excited about is AI and predictive analytics. When it comes to reordering points with inventory, finding the correct answer is key. Inventory truth means that no matter what, you have a full 360-view of what’s available at any given time. 
 
If done correctly, digital technology can also reduce the cost of labor, saving you a couple of hundreds on paper throughout the process, shoring up mistakes, as well as lowering costs for materials across the board. 

Where do you see yourself in 3 years?

Just 3 months ago, our answer would have been MUCH different. We’ve got some news, and it’s good. So good in fact, that we’re poised to hit that 3-year goal in about six months. Big things are happening in the tech space of #inventorymanagement and as luck would have it, we saw it coming.

Alright already, what is it!?

#WithoutWire has always made a name for itself by not just building systems people want now, but systems they’ll need in the future. By keeping an eye on the newest tech, software, and theories in inventory management, we try to think outside the 4-walls of the warehouse and build something that’s made to last. This time, we’re pretty excited.
So excited in fact, that we’re updating our Podcast format + concept to build off the newest news + tech in the industry.

We’re calling it: In Search of Inventory Truth.

​In March 2021 at the #MicrosoftIgnite conference, Microsoft announced their newest upgrade in the #PowerBI platform: Intelligent Order Management, or IOM for short.

This system improves on #Manufacturing #fieldservices and #Distribution processes. Most importantly, however, it’s the latest jump forward in #AI and #MachineLearning that we’ve seen from Microsoft. If this were the launch of the newest smartphone, we would be on the sidewalk, in a lawn-chair, waiting for the store-open so we can get our hands on it.

April 20, 2021, 8:36 AM CDT / Source: CNBC.com

By Amelia Lucas, CNBCProcter & Gamble announced on Tuesday that it will hike prices on baby care, feminine care and adult incontinence products in September to respond to higher commodity costs.

The consumer giant joins a host of other companies, including Kimberly-Clark and Coca-Cola, that are raising prices to protect profit margins. The companies are betting consumers will be willing to pay more for the brand version instead of opting for a cheaper private label. However, that outcome depends on the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and how many consumers will have the cash to spare.

Traceability requirements are costly. The financial risks and costs associated with food safety are increasing due to trade wars and retaliatory uncertainty. The stakes are rising for food suppliers in a landscape of continuously evolving food safety challenges, technologies, and regulations. An increasingly complex food chain with many touch points and value-added products has increased the potential points of contact and opportunities for contamination. It has also increased the complexity of traceability.

Kitting in the manufacturing environment represents a kind of intake process. Logistics kitting organises and even assembles parts used in the manufacturing of a product so they can be delivered to the point of use, saving time on the line. It is often the best example of Lean Manufacturing in practice, eliminating wasted time in production. These two types of kitting are not mutually exclusive as they combine both manufacturing and logistics. The latter is performed in a lower-cost warehouse, such as a third-party logistics providers (3PLs) who manage suppliers’ material, prepare it, and deliver it just-in-time (JIT).

The height of the holiday shipping-season is coming very soon. 3PLs (third party logistics companies), warehouses, distribution centers (DCs) are ready to pick up the pace when high volumes hit. Delivering to the ever-faster demand for same day and next day delivery can cause firms to compromise the principles of occupational health and safety.

Kitting in the manufacturing environment represents a kind of intake process. Logistics kitting organizes and even assembles parts used in the manufacturing of a product so they can be delivered to the point of use, saving time on the line. It is often the best example of Lean Manufacturing in practice, eliminating wasted time in production. These two types of kitting are not mutually exclusive as they combine both manufacturing and logistics. The latter is performed in a lower-cost warehouse, such as a third-party logistics providers (3PLs) who manage suppliers’ material, prepare it, and deliver it just-in-time (JIT).

The benefits of kitting are well known because assembly workers immediately become more efficient. Manufacturers who do not utilize some form of kitting are bottle-necked in material flow. Kitting starts with the production team defining the kit of combined parts. 3PLs can be involved in this process and often can provide good advice on how to package kits in the most logical and effective way.

​FREMONT, CA-- Logistics Tech Outlook announced WithoutWire Inventory Sciences, a global provider of supply chain solutions, as one of the Top 10 Inventory Management Solution Providers of 2018.