Flexible, adaptive supply chain management is an overlooked but vital component of a company's overall innovation strategy.![]()
Weak Links in the Chain
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Danaher's Instruments of Change
This diversified but highly focused company grows through intensive attention to its capabilities in acquisition, customer-facing innovation, leadership development, and continuous improvement of everything it does. Although it's sometimes compared to a private equity firm, Danaher is different -- it buys and builds companies for the long-term, not for rapid fix-up and sale. In this roundtable series of interviews, a group of Danaher top executives explain how their practices and culture evolved. (THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS LICENSED IMAGES)![]()
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Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser on the Next Industrial Revolution
The CEO of Siemens describes how an industrial powerhouse founded in the 19th century is using software, sensors, and savvy to create a digital manufacturer that can thrive in the 21st century.![]()
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A Strategist's Guide to Industry 4.0
Major innovations in digital technology, all coming to maturity right now, are transforming the energy and manufacturing industries. Robotics, 3D printing, data analytics, the Internet of Things, and digital fabrication are often thought of separately. But when they are joined together in a single value chain, they integrate the physical and virtual worlds. Companies that embrace Industry 4.0 will be able to track everything they produce from cradle to grave, tailor products in real time to the specifications of the purchaser, and develop new ways of tackling problems such as climate change and aging populations.![]()
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Is U.S. Manufacturing Really in Decline?
Although fewer people are working at factories in America, output has been rising.![]()
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What Whole Foods Is Learning by Trading Down
The high-end grocery company is using its newly formed 365 chain to experiment with new business practices.![]()
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How to Bring Back Manufacturing Jobs
If U.S. manufacturers were willing and able to fill the many open positions, employment in that sector would come back naturally.![]()
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The Auto Industry's Real Challenge
As automakers pour millions into winning the autonomous vehicle race, they run the risk of ignoring the more imminent threats that could sink them before the technology becomes pervasive.![]()
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The Demands on Auto Suppliers
The vast and crucial auto suppliers industry faces several competitive challenges -- rapid growth in emerging markets, pressure to meet clean air and mileage regulations, and the impact of technology and connectivity. Amid intense competition, suppliers will have to learn how to differentiate themselves and their products to preserve a profitable place in the automobile ecosystem and maintain high entry barriers for rivals. To do so, they must reexamine the profit potential of their products and portfolios, and focus on the innovation potential inherent in each of them.![]()
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Displaced by Automation in Shanghai
The trend of manufacturers replacing human labor with machines isn't restricted to the West.![]()
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A Silver Lining in Gray Markets? It's Complicated.
Although manufacturers can derive some short-term benefits from unauthorized retailers, outright bootlegging is harmful to profits and reputation.![]()
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Getting the Leadership Basics Right
Whether they're selling concrete or chocolate, CEOs can still look to five steadfast rules.![]()
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You May Be Part of a Global Supply Chain
All sorts of U.S. industries, including education and car manufacturing, sell their products and services to international customers.![]()
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Two Simple Concepts for Better Leadership
Learn to operate from two observation points simultaneously and to outsource at home.![]()
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A Strategist's Guide to Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is creating new approaches to business models, operations, and the deployment of people that look likely to fundamentally affect a wide range of sectors. After all, if AI can transform an earthbound industry like agriculture through better understanding of soil and climate factors, what can't it touch? And how long will it be before your company is affected?![]()
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Why the Construction Industry May Be Robot-Proof
There is something unique about building houses that inherently eschews efficiency and automation.![]()
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The Next Wave of Innovation in the Chemicals Industry
The world is potentially on the brink of an age of new powerful materials, fueled by innovation in the chemicals industry. But for today's incumbent chemicals companies to be central players in this story, there are some vital prerequisites: restructuring of their product portfolios, successful exploitation of digital technologies, and rewriting business models to generate higher returns on their investment in innovation.![]()
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The Next Big Technology Could Be Nanomaterials
The discovery and commercialization of graphene, the first two-dimensional material, which is impossibly thin and incredibly strong, has kicked off a renaissance in nanomaterial research and development. This revolution in the understanding of manipulation at the molecular level could reshape a range of businesses, including energy, construction, and manufacturing. Thus far, however, the large incumbent chemical companies have remained aloof from the hive of activity at startups and in academic research labs. Given the potential of these materials to alter a host of industries, that aloofness may be a luxury they can no longer afford.![]()
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The Automaker's Dilemma: Getting More Impact from Innovation Capital
The auto industry is making massive R&D investments in safety, connectivity, and autonomy -- so far without good returns.![]()
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Getting Fit for Mergers and Acquisitions
The approach we call Fit for Growth is a powerful discipline for improving performance that rests on identifying and developing differentiating capabilities, aligning cost structures with those capabilities, and organizing for growth. Typically, the Fit for Growth approach involves a realignment of existing resources at established companies with long operating histories. But the approach can also prove to be a powerful lever when companies are reorganizing and changing shape in response to a significant merger, acquisition, divestiture, or spin-off. Fit for Growth has special relevance in deals because it provides a set of guidelines that ensure the deal is being conceived and executed for the rights reason and in the right ways.![]()
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The Dangerous Necessity of Relying on Bots
Algorithms and AI can help a company achieve massive scale, but they bring with them new risks.![]()
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What's Going on with Wages?
As the labor market continues to change, base pay is rising much more quickly for the bottom 20 percent of earners than for other workers.![]()
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Myanmar's Halting Economic Steps onto the Global Stage
Myanmar's emergence on the global stage will not follow the same path as that taken by other emerging economies -- such as China in the 1980s and Vietnam in the 1990s. That's because automation threatens to undermine the very industries, such as textiles and garments, that emerging nations have traditionally relied on to accelerate economic growth and create jobs. See also "Myanmar's Challenging Pathway to Growth - in Pictures."![]()
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The Magic of Predicting Demand from Data
The application by companies of demand sensing can significantly improve their ability to predict when consumers might demand a product. Using digital technology and data, demand sensing allows for a far more efficient supply chain, too.![]()
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Myanmar's Challenging Pathway to Growth - in Pictures
Myanmar's emergence on the global stage will not follow the same trajectory as other frontier nations. For further insights, read "Myanmar's Halting Economic Steps onto the Global Stage."![]()
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Manufacturing Goes Carbon Negative
In the face of heightened urgency, some companies are seeking to go "carbon negative" by finding ways to actively pull carbon dioxide from the air and lock it into their products. For manufacturers, this means getting access to carbon-negative raw materials. And they will soon have more options for doing so, thanks to an emerging new industrial sector.![]()
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Inside the Digital Factory
Manufacturers have a golden opportunity to take advantage of digitization's promised outsized benefits. Here's how some firms are already doing it.![]()
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Digital Champions
The interlinked platforms that make up Industry 4.0 represent a new kind of challenge for manufacturers and other technology-intensive companies. With four key business ecosystems, they can make this new world their own. Those are the customer solutions, digital operations, technology, and people ecosystems. Our survey of 1,100 digital leaders found that about 10 percent are true Digital Champions -- companies like Bosch, Magna Steyr, Daimler, and Li & Fung.![]()
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The Rise of the Last-Mile Exchange
The rising pace of activity along what's called the last mile of the retail sales chain reflects the boom in e-commerce. But retailers and transportation companies alike are facing systemic challenges and threats in this fast-changing marketplace. Devising a better solution to last-mile delivery will be the next major battle in e-commerce supremacy. The solution may be for companies -- especially the big shippers -- to build a "last-mile exchange" platform that drives delivery decisions, and, crucially, allows retailers and transportation providers to collectively shape delivery demand and adjust continuously to the inherent variability of the last mile. Such an exchange could deliver a win for consumers, retailers, and transportation providers.![]()
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Keeping Cool under Pressure
Lineage Logistics president and chief executive officer Greg Lehmkuhl oversees an unglamorous but critically important kind of supply chain: temperature-controlled vehicles for transporting fresh and frozen food. Bringing this technology up to global scale could be part of the solution to the ongoing problems of food waste and food shortages. In the meantime, as Lineage consolidates family businesses in this vibrant sector, it is developing remarkable innovations in food transportation, energy efficiency, and sustainability.![]()
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