Supply chain news

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, with Customs Declaration Service (CDS) being the replacement. The CHIEF closure is planned in two stages. For most companies using customs brokers […]

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 logistics costs environment.   In a sector that already operates on slim margins and has no room to compromise on safety and standards, there […]

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.   […]

Following last month’s post, I’ll discuss the merits of selecting the best planning policies and review the concept and value of economic metrics. Clearly, all inventory systems contain many uncertainties, and these require a probability distribution of demand for items that can be replenished at either a certain level or point in time.  Actually, it […]

For most companies supplying technical products to their market (i.e., non-perishable, and non-consumable), becoming circular can means that, someday, close to 100% of their products may need to come back.  Now, any supply chain leader would almost instantly come to realise that their operations are just not set up for that.  While most companies would […]

Update 14/09/2022: The date for required labelling changes has been amended to 31st December 2023. As part of the Brexit transition, food producers were given an extended transition period to adapt food labelling to new UK standards.  Companies will need to make any required labelling changes for goods sold in Great Britain by 30 September […]