Above the Fold: Supply Chain Logistics News (August 16, 2024)

By Adrian Gonzalez

Have you ever cleaned your clothes dryer vent? You know, that hose that goes from the back of your dryer to the outside?

You’re supposed to clean it at least annually to prevent the risk of fire (and other reasons), but I cleaned mine for the first time in 17 years recently.

What prompted me to do it? Our dryer wasn’t working well, so I did some research and read that a clogged vent could impact drying performance. I bought a thingamajig on Amazon, watched a YouTube video on how to use it, and cleaned the vent.

Yes, the vent desperately needed to be cleaned. Enough lint and other crap came out to stuff a medium-sized teddy bear. And no, cleaning the vent did not fix the drying problem. Did you really think it would be that easy for me?

But I refused to give up, so I watched many more videos on YouTube (too many, my wife told me) on how to take dryers apart and diagnose problems. I’m an engineer, after all, and in case you don’t know, YouTube is the greatest resource for Do-It-Yourselfers.

I ultimately hit the jackpot when I found this very informative video by FrugalDYI, appropriately titled, “Troubleshoot Gas Dryer | Dryer Won’t Heat, Won’t Start, Won’t Stop, Dry Time Too Long, Dries Too Hot.”

I took out my multimeter, tested all the components she recommended, and found the culprit: the gas valve ignition solenoid coils.

Problem fixed for $8.95.

Being able to tell my wife we saved $800+ for a new dryer because I watched “too many YouTube videos”: priceless.

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Moving on, here is the supply chain and logistics news that caught my attention this week:

Körber acquiring MercuryGate

It seems like everytime I go on vacation, some notable acquisition takes place in the industry. While I was off the grid last week, Körber announced that it is acquiring TMS provider MercuryGate. Here is an excerpt from the press release:

The acquisition of MercuryGate will establish a critical pillar of Körber’s ambition to create a unified supply chain execution suite that can offer real-time optimization and collaboration across the supply chain. Customers will benefit from integrated processes across functions, faster and more accurate decision-making and the ability to mitigate risks and disruptions more effectively.

In a blog post explaining the acquisition, Körber CIO Sean Elliott writes:

In today’s fast-paced and increasingly complex landscape, businesses need a new approach that seamlessly integrates every aspect of supply chain execution —from order management to warehouse operations and transportation logistics. Specifically, since the pandemic, it has become clear to us that strategic integration between Order Management Systems (OMS), Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and Transportation Management Systems (TMS) is the key to achieving this balance, since seamless flow and cooperation between each of these systems creates a variety of opportunities to improve resilience and efficiency at the same time.

SAP, Oracle, and Infor would certainly agree with that statement since they’ve been making that case to customers for years.

The roll-up of OMS, TMS, and WMS has been happening, on and off, for as long as I’ve been an industry analyst. And so has the “ERP/SCE Suite vs. Best-of-Breed” debate.

What about Yard Management Systems (YMS), Real-time Freight Visibility, and Global Trade Management (GTM)? Yup, you can roll those up into a single execution platform too.

We’re now also seeing a revival of vendors looking to bridge the gap between Supply Chain Planning and Supply Chain Execution. For example, see Kinaxis’s acquisition of MPO and Manhattan Associates’ announcement in May 2024 of Manhattan Active Supply Chain Planning, “the industry’s first unified business planning platform that enables bi-directional collaboration between supply chain planning and execution systems.” You can add e2open and Blue Yonder to this group too (as well as the ERP vendors).

What do customers think?

In June 2020, we asked members of our Indago supply chain research community — who are all supply chain and logistics executives from manufacturing, retail, and distribution companies — “How would you characterize your company’s strategy/approach toward selecting a supply chain software solution?”

“Selecting the applications and providers that meet our requirements, regardless of provider type” received the plurality of votes from our Indago member respondents (41%). But a third of the respondents (33%) are looking to “standardize on our ERP provider’s supply chain offerings.”

Source: January 2020 Indago survey of 27 supply chain and logistics executives from manufacturing, retail, and distribution companies.

“Our direction is to utilize a vendor that best meets the needs of the business from a functionality and scalability standpoint,” said one Indago member executive. “We have made a more conscientious effort to avoid customizations wherever possible and try to stick to the base code of the application.”

Another executive offered a different perspective: “The main push currently is to use much more of our ERP (single system). In the past we allowed everyone to pick different systems although our ERP [was capable]. Sometimes we think we are much smarter [than we really are] and need more than we really do. It is harder now than if we [had chosen] correctly in the past.”

Overall, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Best-of-Breeds death are greatly exaggerated.

Whenever there are acquisitions in the enterprise software space, the usual questions come up: How well will the solutions be integrated, especially if they have different architectures? How long will it take? Will customers be forced to upgrade or migrate to a new platform? Will the cultures of the two companies clash, especially among the development and sales teams? And the list goes on.

These are all valid and important questions. But there is another question that doesn’t get asked often enough: Even if the promises in the press release are realized from a technology standpoint, are customers ready to actually work in a unified and synchronized way across business functions?

Sadly, I don’t think so. The functional silos remain as strong as ever.

In a recent Indago survey, we asked our members, “What are the biggest obstacles to bridging the gap between supply chain planning and execution processes?” Topping the list was “We lack cross-functional metrics (i.e., our metrics incentive optimizing each process separately).”

Yes, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

And with that, have a meaningful weekend!

Song of the Week: “Hold Back the River” by James Bay