Supply chain news

The world of corporate sustainability and, more specifically, climate action is currently buzzing with catchy goals and commitments such as Net Zero, Carbon Neutral, Carbon Free or even Carbon Negative. While their definitions, scope, and deadlines, as well as their authenticity and practicality, may differ and be debatable, they all share one thing: the stated […]

Fundamentally, supply chain strategy is required, not only to support overall corporate strategy, but in many cases also to shape strategy by enabling new opportunities for growth and differentiation. By bridging customer needs and supplier capabilities the supply chain strategy will define a company’s core competencies, core processes, and will choose its suppliers and its […]

Ireland Supply Chain Skills Week – March 27th to April 1st 2023 One of the common challenges across all sectors of the economy is recruiting and developing supply chain resources to meet current and future needs.   For the last three years, I have been privileged to participate in a cross-industry Logistics and Supply Chain […]

Whether your business is ready or not, the UKCA deadline of 31st December 2022 is looming. In this post we discuss what actions your business needs to take to ensure compliance. What is UKCA marking? Most of us are familiar with the CE mark – the European Union conformity mark. After Brexit, for most products, […]

HMRC is in the process of changing the systems that it uses for managing customs declarations – phasing out its Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) system by 31st March 2023. The CHIEF closure is planned in two stages. 30th September 2022 – Import declarations to close on CHIEF – being replaced by […]

Lorcan Sheehan, CEO​ of PerformanSC, was a panellist on a webinar hosted by Bord Bia last month. The webinar provided an introductory guide for Irish food and drink companies in relation to managing logistics, working with third-party logistics providers (3PLs) and sharing best practices in a challenging cost environment. Also on the panel was Michael […]

Higher fuel and energy costs, higher insurance costs, a continuing shortage of HGV drivers, increased customs and trade compliance requirements and increased delays at ports all feed into a very challenging cost environment for logistics.   In a sector that already operates on slim margins and has no room to compromise on safety and standards, […]

You won’t hear us saying this often, but there is more to life than supply chain.     Supply chain teams have been on a virtual war footing since before the start of the pandemic.  The normal rules of supply chain have been cast aside as demands change and channels have shifted.  Markets have opened […]

The burning platform is a term that has been widely used in change management. It describes a critical initial step in any change process aimed at helping people realise the grim consequences of not changing. It is based on the analogy of someone standing on a burning platform faced with the prospect of certain and […]

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the poster displays from consulting projects by students completing a masters in supply chain from the Smurfit School at University College Dublin.  There were approximately 15 projects completed by teams across topics ranging from procurement, transportation, channel management, eCommerce, sustainability, product portfolio management and risk management.   […]