En marzo de 2015 participo como ponente en la Logistics Summit de Mexico DF.
El objetivo de la ponencia es entender cómo podemos crear valor desde la cadena de suministro y conocer cuál es el impacto de las decisiones operativas en la parte financiera de la empresa. Aquí dejo un enlace a un vídeo de 90 segundos donde doy algunos detalles más. ¡Nos vemos en el DF!
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– ¿Cómo valora que el Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal (Sepe) haya incluido en su Observatorio de las Ocupaciones una nueva categoría específica de logística. En concreto, la categoría “Empleados de logística y transporte de mercancías”?
– Es la constatación de una tendencia irreversible en el medio plazo: las empresas siguen llevando su producción a países de bajo coste y la función logística es cada vez más relevante para competir. El peso del coste logístico ha crecido sustancialmente en las dos últimas décadas. A esto han contribuido primordialmente el precio al alza de los combustibles, el acortamiento del ciclo de vida de los productos y la proliferación de artículos ofrecidos a los clientes.
– <>¿Cree que este paso permitirá una mayor profesionalización de los Recursos Humanos en el sector?
– Sí, en la medida en que la inclusión del perfil logístico como categoría ayude a que las empresas tomen conciencia de la importancia de esta función.
– ¿Cómo puede influir en el ámbito formativo del sector?
– Dará sin duda más relevancia a la formación, que es esencial en este campo, más que en otros si cabe, dada la extrema complejidad de las cadenas de suministro globales, que deben tener en cuenta no sólo los costes de producción y transporte, sino también los costes aduaneros, de obsolescencia y financieros, por citar algunos.
– Como experto en la materia, ¿qué es lo que más le llama la atención de los datos aportados en esta categoría por el observatorio (adjunto el documento)?
– Por un lado, echo de menos la inclusión de perfiles de mayor calado, como directores de logística o de cadena de suministro, una función que cobra relevancia día a día y que, cada vez más, depende directamente del director general de una empresa. Por otro, me resulta llamativo que todavía en España se tenga una percepción limitada de la logística que hace referencia únicamente a las funciones de transporte y almacenaje. Desde hace años las empresas vienen hablando de la gestión de la cadena de suministro para incluir un buen número de funciones adicionales, desde el pronóstico de la demanda hasta el diseño de contratos para compartir el riesgo con los proveedores.
– ¿Necesita el sector logístico abrir un debate sobre las categorías, perfiles y profesionalización de sus distintos puestos de trabajo?
– Pienso que, en este caso, la taxonomía no es tan importante como la necesidad de profesionalizar el sector en general.
– ¿Cuáles son las últimas tendencias en cuanto a perfiles y profesionalización dentro del sector?
– Observo tres tendencias principales: primero, la creación de departamentos de supply chain, aunando bajo una única batuta un número creciente de eslabones de la cadena de valor; segundo, la importancia de la función financiera: un mando que hoy no comprenda el impacto de sus decisiones en el balance o en el estado de flujos de caja de su empresa no puede ser un profesional de la logística; y por último, el auge de la función conjunta de planificación entre ventas y operaciones, comúnmente llamado S&OP (por sus siglas en inglés).
– ¿Y en cuanto a formación?
– Por la naturaleza de su trabajo, el logista convive estrechamente con muchos departamentos de la compañía, como el marketing o las finanzas. Por tanto, aparte de los conocimientos técnicos, la tendencia es enseñar lo suficiente de todo para poder entender los puntos de vista de las funciones anejas, desde gestión de equipos hasta finanzas. Para eso, la formación tiene que ser sólida en el ámbito técnico y extremadamente eficiente en el resto, para aprender muy bien lo básico en un tiempo limitado.
– La gran mayoría (66%) de las ofertas recogidas por SEPE para hacer su análisis procede de los portales de empleo privados y el 25% de portales del servicio público de empleo y el 9% de páginas web de las propias empresas, ¿son los portales privados la principal fuente para la búsqueda y oferta de este tipo de empleos? ¿cómo interpreta los datos ofrecidos por el observatorio en este sentido?
– Para perfiles medios me parecen realistas los datos; para perfiles más altos, yo observo que se utilizan mucho más las redes de contactos, al igual que en otros ámbitos.
– ¿En qué aspectos debería avanzar la gestión de los Recursos Humanos en el sector logístico?
– En mi opinión, recursos humanos debe hacer mucho mayor hincapié en la formación. Este cambio de prioridades debe nacer del convencimiento de que un profesional bien formado en cadena de suministro confiere a la empresa empleadora una ventaja competitiva formidable.
– ¿Y la formación logística, en qué aspectos debería avanzar?
– Con algunas excepciones y en contraste con Estados Unidos, el país más avanzado en cuanto a formación logística, en España hay una carencia grande de programas de grado y posgrado de primer nivel. En nuestro caso, los contenidos de los programas de posgrado del Zaragoza Logistics Center están definidos de acuerdo con el centro de transporte y logística del MIT, la universidad número 1 del mundo en este ámbito.
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Original article is aquí (in Spanish)
The years of economic bonanza drew many public and semipublic initiatives to our region geared to incentivizing economic growth in the region. Aramón, walqa, and Motorland are all examples of initiatives of this kind. In the university realm, the existing infrastructure was extended to create new campuses in Huesca and Teruel. Lastly, as a result of an agreed commitment to logistics, given our region’s potential in this industry, we witnessed the creation of PLAZA—with its younger brothers PLHUS and Platea—on the one hand, and the establishment of Zaragoza Logistics Center (ZLC) by MIT (the world’s leading school of engineering), on the other. Years prior to joining this latter project, I already praised its creation and the commitment shown by the regional government to this project in this newspaper (April 2004, May 2005).
Source: Heraldo de Aragón
With the advent of the economic crisis, the rules of the game have undergone a profound change. It is no longer about achieving all the goals established at a lower cost, but rather about achieving the greatest number of goals on a restrictive budget. In other words, it has become necessary to establish priorities, because it is impossible to achieve everything, which implies abandoning certain commitments viable in the boom years in order to commit firmly to others. In this regard, it would be disastrous for our region to apply a ‘one size fits all’ economy, attempting to keep all the projects running by reducing the budget of all initiatives, good ones and bad ones, by a similar percentage.
What criteria should be followed to establish which projects should be given priority? Logically, focus should be placed on those projects that are aligned with the strategy of the region, which can be inferred from the electoral program presented by the governing party last year. It stated that Aragón should be a “territory of excellence in teaching”, “achieve an optimal collaboration between companies and University”, “attract international teachers and researchers” and seek excellence “in those areas of knowledge susceptible to becoming niches of excellence comparable with the best in the world”, mentioning logistics as the first example.
In this regard, Zaragoza Logistics Center has many of the attributes required to be part of the group of initiatives to be focused on. Some examples: The ZLC international masters course has been ranked the best logistics program in Spain in the last two years (El Mundo newspaper ranking). As to collaboration with companies, ZLC worked both with Aragon companies (two consultancy projects currently under way with Saica; seventeen alumni contracted by Transportes Carreras to date, …) and multinationals (the list is long: companies such as Adidas, Amazon, BASF, Caterpillar, Cummins, DHL, P&G or Roche have come to Zaragoza to finance projects or hire students). These brilliant students (from Aragón or from elsewhere) will eventually reach decision-making positions in the multinationals that are now hiring them. And it is then when the investment made will more than yield its return, in the form of job creation, projects or research centers.
The first significant initiative of this kind that comes off shall justify economically the existence of ZLC for more than a hundred years. But we have to give it more time. It is not fair to demand from ZLC in 10 years of existence something that nobody has demanded from the University of Zaragoza in 450 years. ZLC is still a “start-up” in the academic sector. MIT has just celebrated its 150th birthday. Harvard Business School celebrated its centenary in 2008. Excellence in academia takes its time. It is tempting to forget priorities and focus on short-sighted, short-term projects. But if we really want our region to become a reference for others and not turn it into a piece of land with no hope, we should continue to give our firm commitment to ZLC and other similar initiatives.
To know more about ZLC please follow the link www.zlc.edu.es
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Accede a la noticia de Heraldo de Aragón pulsando aquí
Read it in English
Los años de bonanza trajeron a nuestra comunidad autónoma multitud de iniciativas públicas o semipúblicas para incentivar el crecimiento económico en la región. Así nacieron por ejemplo Aramón, walqa, o Motorland. En el ámbito universitario se desdobló la infraestructura existente para crear nuevos campus en Huesca y Teruel. Finalmente, en una clara apuesta por la logística, y dado el potencial de nuestra región en este capítulo, se impulsó la creación de PLAZA—con sus hermanos menores PLHUS y Platea—por un lado y del Zaragoza Logistics Center (ZLC) de la mano del MIT (primera escuela de ingeniería del mundo) por otro. Años antes de unirme a este último proyecto ya alabé en este periódico (abril 2004, mayo 2005) la creación del mismo y la apuesta que el gobierno regional había hecho por él.
Fuente: Heraldo de Aragón
Con la llegada de la crisis económica las reglas del juego han cambiado profundamente. Ya no se trata de conseguir todos los objetivos marcados al menor coste, sino de conseguir el mayor número de objetivos dado un presupuesto restrictivo. Es decir, hay que marcar prioridades porque no todo se puede conseguir, lo que implica desechar algunas de las apuestas que podían ser sostenidas en los años de bonanza para apostar decididamente por el resto. En este sentido, sería nefasto para nuestra comunidad aplicar una economía de “café para todos”, tratando de mantener todos los proyectos en marcha reduciendo un porcentaje similar el presupuesto de todas las iniciativas, buenas y malas.
¿Cuál debe ser el criterio para marcar qué proyectos potenciar? Lógicamente es preciso seleccionar aquéllos que estén alineados con la estrategia de la región, que puede inferirse del programa electoral que el partido en el gobierno presentó el año pasado. En él se habla de que Aragón debe ser un “territorio de excelencia en la enseñanza”, “alcanzar la óptima colaboración entre empresas y Universidad”, fomentar “la atracción de docentes e investigadores internacionales” y buscar la excelencia “en aquellas áreas de conocimiento que sean susceptibles de convertirse en nichos de excelencia equiparables a los mejores del mundo”, poniendo como ejemplo de esto último en primer lugar la logística.
En este sentido, el Zaragoza Logistics Center posee muchos de los atributos requeridos para estar dentro del grupo de las iniciativas por las que apostar. Algunos ejemplos: el máster internacional de ZLC ha sido considerado como el mejor programa de logística en España en los dos últimos años (ranking del diario El Mundo). En cuanto a la colaboración con empresas, ZLC trabaja tanto con empresas aragonesas (dos proyectos de consultoría actualmente en marcha con Saica; diecisiete exalumnos contratados por Transportes Carreras hasta la fecha, …) como multinacionales (la lista es larga: empresas como Adidas, Amazon, BASF, Caterpillar, Cummins, DHL, P&G o Roche han venido a Zaragoza a financiar proyectos o a contratar alumnos). Estos alumnos brillantes (aragoneses o no) llegarán con el tiempo a los ámbitos de decisión de las multinacionales que ahora los contratan. Y es entonces cuando retornará con creces la inversión efectuada, en forma de creación de empleo, proyectos o centros de investigación.
La primera de estas iniciativas de calado que cristalice justificará económicamente la existencia de ZLC durante más de cien años. Pero hay que darle tiempo al tiempo. No se le puede exigir a ZLC en 10 años de existencia lo que por ejemplo no se le ha exigido a la Universidad de Zaragoza en 450. ZLC es todavía una “start-up” en el sector académico. El MIT acaba de cumplir 150 años. La escuela de negocios de Harvard celebró su centenario en 2008. La excelencia en el ámbito universitario toma su tiempo. Es tentador olvidarse de las prioridades y apostar por políticas miopes y cortoplacistas. Pero si de verdad queremos hacer de nuestra comunidad un referente para otras y no convertirla en un solar sin esperanza debemos seguir apostando firmemente por ZLC y otras iniciativas similares.
Para saber más sobre ZLC www.zlc.edu.es
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When faced with the question “What is the name of the most innovative company in the world?”, people will most likely answer “Apple, of course”. The answer seems undeniable, and there are good reasons for that: iPhone, iPad, and iWhatever are synonyms of great innovative products these days.
However, there is a bias there; when people think about innovation, the first idea that comes to mind is product innovation. However, a company can gain a huge competitive advantage trough process or supply chain innovation. I am referring to notorious cases of companies who have completely redefined the way of doing business in their industries. Some examples include Benetton, which changed the sequence of operations by delaying the time where pieces of garment were dyed (postponement), or Barilla, one of the first firms to adopt VMI (Vendor managed inventory) by managing its customers’ inventory so as to reduce order variability amplification. These changes had a large impact on the bottom line and gave these firms a clear competitive advantage in front of their competitors.
The good thing about process innovation is that it may be hard for competitors to copy: there is no “product reverse engineering” to be performed. Competitors can and will try to emulate, but success is not by any means guaranteed. Think for instance about the well-known Toyota Production System (TPS). It has been around for about 40 years and still firms are trying to adopt it with bittersweet results. Why? It is simply that most of the changes cannot be seen, they are embedded in firms’ DNA, as pointed out by Spear and Bowen*, and followers just copy the visible part of it, such as Kanban systems in the case of TPS. A more recent example is Inditex, whose flagship Zara defined a new paradigm in a mature industry by betting on speed rather than cost. With more than 5,500 stores around the world, Inditex’s founder Amancio Ortega, is today the richest man in Europe, right before Ikea’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad, another visionary who also completely changed the rules of his industry.
This may not be the case for firms launching innovative products: Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is closely following Apple’s iPad and even introducing features which go beyond what the Apple product offers. It is true that patents help sometimes, but the fact remains that a burden of expensive legal work is usually triggered as soon as competitors start copying or including almost identical products in their portfolios. The legal battle triggered when Windows 95 was launched by Microsoft or the generic drug business in India may be good examples of this.
All in all, supply chain innovation is likely not to be appreciated as much as product innovation, but its impact on the financials and the value of firms may be larger and last longer. Also, given the relatively small efforts exerted so far on supply chain innovation, there must be indeed great opportunities available to explore, low hanging fruit to be taken by those smart people who are able to identify those opportunities.
(*) Spear, Steven and H. Kent Bowen. Decoding the DNA of Toyota. Harvard Business Review
To learn more about Supply Chain www.zlc.edu.es
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Bizi-Zaragoza rents bikes to users who need to ride for short periods of time within the city. Bikes are located in 130+ stations in the city, mainly downtown. To get a bike, a user goes to a station and unlock the desired bike with his or her user card. To return it, he or she has to find a station with an empty slot and identify him or herself again.
Bizi Station. Source: http://www.heraldo.es
The idea is very interesting, and has been proved successful in several cities. The system in place, however, is far from perfect, since users face two major challenges. On the one hand, a user looking for a bike may find the nearest station empty (see black dots in the picture below). On the other hand, a user looking for a slot to leave a bike may find the nearest station full (see purple dots). Furthermore, stations downtown tend to fill quickly in the morning and empty in the afternoon/evening. Good on-line information may be helpful to find a bike or a spot, but still the bottom line is that the typical user my find the service unreliable when his meeting with her boss starts at 9am, and he has to plan for extra 20 minutes of safety time to park his bike so as not to be late.
To mitigate this situation, and according to today’s Heraldo de Aragón(*), a local newspaper, Bizi managers constantly check on-line those stations with no bikes, and send vans with additional bikes to “replenish” those empty stations in no more than 10 minutes. Here is some anecdotal evidence that this may not be the case. The following picture (borrowed from the company web site) shows the map of all stations at 10:02:45 am today. There were 13 empty stations (marked in black in the map), mainly in the periphery.
Ten minutes later, the picture was the following
As it can be observed, 12 of those 13 stations were still empty. Twenty minutes later, there was a new picture.
In this case, 8 of 13 stations were still empty. Thirty minutes later (picture not reported) still 8 of 13 stations were still empty. A similar problem can be observed with full stations (purple dots in the maps).
The question that arises next is how to mitigate this problem. A feasible option is to place stock (i.e. bikes) according to demand patterns to obtain a given service level. For instance, let us say that for the last 50 Mondays, between 7:30 am and 9:00 am, station#77 has observed a demand pattern that can be considered normally distributed, with mean 10 and standard deviation 2 (that implies that roughly 2/3 of the days demand is between 8 and 12 bikes). How many bikes are needed to guarantee an average service level of, say, 99%? The answer is
ROUNDUP(10+2*NORMSINV(0.99),0)=15 bikes
Therefore, rather that being reactive, Bizi managers could be proactive by replenishing inventory at night before users go to work early in the morning. The previous analysis is quite simple and can be easily extended for all stations and for full stations. The good news is that the company should have a lot of data, given that users sign in every time they take or leave a bike. To improve forecasting methods, individual patterns can be studied, since the system knows the ID of the user that takes or leaves a bike.
Finally, there is the problem of devoting workforce to move bikes from one station to the other. A potential solution may be to charge more to those users who do not make “return trips” within a day. If so, users have incentives to return bikes to where they were in the evening, significantly reducing the amount of bikes to be moved at night.
To know more about Supply Chain www.zlc.edu.es
(*) The piece of news is here (in Spanish)
The web page of Bizi Zaragoza is here
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Last week I attended a nice talk given by the head of logistics of an e-commerce retailer. His firm holds roughly 10,000 SKUs and serves daily demand to end users from a central distribution center. A characteristic of the industry in which this firm operates is that orders should be satisfied in less than 24 hours. Since suppliers’ lead-times are on the weeks or even months (some are based in Asia), the firm is forced to hold large amounts of inventory to cope with uncertain demand.
The firm has a customer service level goal as high as 99% for all products. This figure, 99%, may be judged as appropriate by some people, but rises at least two questions: 1) why 99% and not, for instance, 90% or 99.9%, and 2) why 99% for all 10,000 products.
The answer to the first question might have to do with the fact that achieving 100% service level is virtually impossible. Therefore (put yourself in the CEO’s shoes,) if you want to provide your customers with an excellent service level, a feasible, close-enough-to-100%, easy-to-remember, and popular figure is 99%. And why not, you want to keep that figure high for all 10,000 SKUs in your warehouse.
Picture: directindustry.com
A key point that is missed here is the fact that service level that maximizes expected profit should at least depend on the price and the cost of each particular item. In fact, inventory theory (or common sense) says that one should increase service level until the marginal benefit of adding an additional unit be exactly as high as the marginal cost of adding that additional unit. Note why this makes sense: given the cost of an specific item, if its market price goes up, the firm should increase the service level for that item. Why? a higher price implies a higher unit margin, and you want to capture that additional margin with higher probability, thus inventory should go up. Likewise, if given a price, the cost of an item increases, service level should be reduced to avoid a higher probability of holding too much inventory (as measured in moneys,) which is mainly driven by obsolescence, insurance, spoilage, and financial costs.
There are other factors that have an impact on service level above and beyond price and cost, such as the so-called salvage cost or goodwill cost. But as a conclusion, and without entering into details on how to compute optimal service levels, it should be apparent that 1) There is an optimal service level that depends on the margin of the product, which may be below or above 99%; and 2) service level should be computed for each SKU, or type of SKUs, thus defining it for all items in a firm does not make by and large much economic sense.
To know more about Supply Chain www.zlc.edu.es
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“Conocimiento y Experiencias logísticas innovadoras”
El 19 de marzo participo en esta sesión para hablar de la “Supply Chain and Finance Initiative“, puesta en marcha desde el Zaragoza Logistics Center. Haré una breve introducción de qué es ZLC y en qué consiste esta iniciativa. Después ilustraré con un ejemplo cómo cambia el comportamiento de un comprador cuando tiene que preocuparse por el impacto de sus decisiones no sólo en la cuenta de resultados, sino también en el balance de la empresa.
Más información e inscripciones en este enlace.
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The word Logistics, initially borrowed from a military context, has had to do with the ability to move materials and personnel in an efficient way from one place to another. In a business context, according to the APICS dictionary, its meaning has changed to include additional activities, such as procurement and production. Sure enough, in this context, Logistics is defined as
“The art and science of obtaining, producing, and distributing material and product in the proper place and in proper quantities.” (APICS dictionary on line, accessed in Feb 2012)
However, the CSCMP dictionary does not include production activities, but specifically mentions storage and refers also to services and information:
“The process of planning, implementing, and controlling procedures for the […] transportation and storage of goods, including services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption […] This definition includes inbound, outbound, internal, and external movements.” (CSCMP. Terms and Glossary. Feb 2010)
which is closer to its original meaning, i.e., “just” transportation and storage. it seems that, as the realm of the discipline was increasing an attempt was done to adjust the word logistics to the broader context of application, what explains the broader scope of logistics according to APICS.
source: http://www.translandgroup.com
Enter Supply Chain
In the early eighties, logistics was not enough to refer to all the increasing types of activities performed by “logistics” managers, and a new term was coined: “Supply Chain Management”. A strategic flavor was added and the scope was enlarged both longitudinally (from “end to end,” or E2E) and transversely (not only material flows, but also information and cash was considered.) The two aforementioned dictionaries agree on this scope, except for the CSCMP dictionary, which does not mention cash.
“The global network used to deliver products and services from raw materials to end customers through an engineered flow of information, physical distribution, and cash.” (APICS dictionary on line, accessed in Feb 2012)
“The material and informational interchanges in the logistical process stretching from acquisition of raw materials to delivery of finished products to the end user. All vendors, service providers and customers are links in the supply chain.” (CSCMP. Terms and Glossary. Feb 2010)
Since then, the two terms have coexisted, but the evolution of the word Logistics towards Supply Chain (as it can be seen in the definition of Logistics according to APICS) still creates a lot of confusion in industry and academia. In my opinion, the relationship between the two could be defined as follows: “Logistics is the portion of Supply Chain that is concerned with the activities of transportation and storage of parts,” which is line with the CSCMP definition.
Supply Chain, however, is concerned not only with transportation and storage, but with many other key processes, such as demand forecasting, planning, purchasing, collaboration (contracts), outsourcing, facility location (network design), or inventory management (how much and where to hold inventory.)
To learn more about Supply Chain www.zlc.edu.es
Filed under Education, Supply Chain
Un total de 27 participantes de las mejores escuelas del mundo participaron el pasado fin de semana en el Vestas Winnovation Challenge en Dinamarca. En este encuentro, Vivek Radhakrishnan, estudiante del máster internacional de supply chain en el Zaragoza Logistics Center, obtuvo el premio en la categoría de supply chain. Por segunda vez consecutiva los estudiantes de este programa logran llegar a la final del Vestas Winnovation Challenge en esta categoría.
Además del ganador, otros estudiantes del mismo programa, Kristin Bautista, Sergio Tovar y Andrés Vadillo (en la foto), también llegaron a la final de esta competición internacional organizada por Vestas. El mérito es enorme, dados la variedad y el nivel de las universidades presentes en la competición.
Foto: Andrés Vadillo
Este éxito no sino el síntoma de que se están haciendo muy bien las cosas en este programa máster: selección muy cuidada y exigente de estudiantes de cuatro continentes, adaptación de contenidos a la demanda de las empresas multinacionales que buscan profesionales altamente cualificados en supply chain y profesores de primer nivel venidos de todo el mundo.
El resultado es que las empresas se disputan a los estudiantes incluso antes de terminar el programa. El año pasado el 100% de los estudiantes del programa (unos 25 en media de 5 años a esta parte) tenían al menos una oferta 3 meses después de la graduación. El salario medio de los trabajos aceptados subió hasta 99.000$. Un éxito mayor si cabe que la obtención del galardón de Vestas este año.
Ver más información del programa máster ZLOG en supply chain aquí: http://mastersupplychain.edu.es/
Ver la noticia en la página de Vestas aquí: http://www.vestas.com/winnovation
Filed under Supply Chain
Blog de Alejandro Serrano 