Ray Riescher is a Business Process Manager at Inovis that is heavily invested in our SCRUM movement. Recently, Ray contributed a piece to the Agile Executive about how Inovis adopted the “All in!” strategy used by Erik Huddleston to streamline and transform our company’s software engineering process. Here is an excerpt from The Agile Flywheel.

We dove head first into Agile Scrum and adapted to it very quickly. However, it wasn’t until we landed a very large and demanding customer that Scrum was really put to the test. New enhancements, new features, and new configurations were all needed ASAP.  Scrum delivered with rapid development and deployment in the form of releases that were moving into production with amazing velocity. Our release cadence hit warp drive and at one point we experienced several months where multiple teams’ production releases were deploying at the end of every two week sprint.

Read the rest of Ray’s article on the Agile Executive>>

Last week, we asked you to answer our poll about your experiences in 2010 thus far. Over on Supply Chain Brain, Bill Methinitis and Nathan Gollaher have written an article about how companies are reacting to the global economic crisis by reshaping the way they do their business.

According to a survey released by Ernst and Young of more than 300 C-suite and board-level executives, businesses are seeking to improve performance through entry into new geographic markets, moving operations to lower cost markets, making strategic acquisitions and making other fundamental changes to the business model. The companies that have avoided broad business changes in the past are now looking into new processes and methods to breathe more life into their business.

For global organizations looking into reshaping their businesses, here are some important factors to consider:

• Corporate reshaping impacts the management of customs duties

Customs duties are not often the main driver of today’s corporate reshaping activities. Nevertheless, an increase in global customs duty liability can have a detrimental impact on the tax effectiveness of the supply chain – especially considering that in some jurisdictions, customs duties can be a primary supply chain cost. The process of corporate reshaping involves basic changes to the business model that may result in increased duties.

• Altering physical flows or sourcing locations may increase duties

Companies often move some or all of their own production, warehousing, or distribution locations from one country to another. They may also change the sourcing locations of goods from third parties. For instance, a company may change from a local to a centralized distribution model to obtain economies of scale, improve customer service, or obtain tax benefits. A company may also move manufacturing to a lower-cost country to improve margins.

While there are global efforts within the World Trade Organization for duty reduction (and elimination for certain products), each country ultimately defines its own duty rates. Countries may also participate in free-trade agreements or sponsor other special duty-relief programs. Duty rates, free-trade agreement eligibility and many duty-relief programs are based on the nature of the imported product (tariff classification), the country of origin, and the country of importation.

By moving sourcing, production, warehousing or distribution from one country to another, any combination  elements that drive duty costs can result in a higher or lower global duty spend.

• Moving profits between related-party entities by increasing the transfer price on related party sales may result in increased duties

Companies often move profits by changing the functions and risk profile of entities within their supply chain, thereby increasing or decreasing the transfer price on sales between related-party entities. For most imports, the customs value is based on the invoice price of the goods being sold and the customs duties are calculated by multiplying the customs value by a product-specific duty rate. Increasing the transfer price on these sales may result in increased duties.

• Moving operations to lower cost markets and entering into new geographic markets may increase the opportunity for costly errors

Businesses that are currently restructuring, reshaping and moving items from one point to another are significantly more vulnerable to costly errors. In order to stay on top of global distribution and the variety of rules and regulation that come with this broad scope, organizations should focus on gaining granular supply chain visibility. An effective  tool that shows end-to-end visibility in real time will save a lot of time, effort and money.

The Inovis Blog is always looking to extend our online network. We’d love to know all of those great blogs out there that provide helpful reads and other sites with great information about the supply chain, MFT and B2B matters. What are your favorite industry related blogs, message boards or social sites?

If you’d prefer to open a discussion with other industry professionals, the Inovis Linkedin Group is asking the same question today. We’re always looking for great and inspiring folks to add to our network and we appreciate your referrals.

Happy Friday!

While  ‘going green’ may be viewed by some as a temporary trend, greener practices are proving to be beneficial to not only the environment, but to businesses as well. Don’t believe me? Just ask Walmart.

In addition to asking suppliers to meet stricter quality and environmental standards, the mega retailer recently awarded the World Resources institute (WRI) a $420,000 grant to develop tools that companies can use to measure their supply chains’ carbon footprints (defined as the total set of greenhouse gas emission caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product).  Why are they putting such emphasis on greener practices? Quite simply, the marketplace is demanding it.

And that’s not a bad thing for companies. According to an About.com article providing an introduction to the green supply chain, General Motors reduced disposal costs by $12 million when it established a reusable container program with their suppliers. And many other companies have lowered waste-disposal and training costs, fewer environmental-permitting fees, and reduced material costs. So, how does a business get the ball rolling?

A recent AMR Research report from Simon Jacobsen suggests that companies looking to go green must consider product-specific environmental health and safety (EH&S) programs. Developing and implementing product-specific EH&S  programs will help put a spotlight on possible risk management problems within the supply chain.

For companies looking to take steps towards these programs, Jacobsen suggests determining ownership of a product and employing third-party companies to assist in EH&S management, along with internal document and data management. Jacobsen also suggests that software as a service offerings may help simplify internal data management.

Learn more about the AMR Research report on green supply chains.

Most of us will agree that scorecards are an effective way to maximize trading partner performance. And while it is important to use metrics, sometimes companies can focus on the numbers too much. As the Value Chain article points out, the supplier scorecard should be viewed as a tool in the overall supplier evaluation process.

In addition to establishing such standards as which KPIs to use, where to gather data and how to collect feedback, companies should also focus on creating a process that is end-to-end with identified goals, objectives, strategies, participants, roles and responsibilities. The supplier scorecard should be developed, deployed, acted upon and continuously improved based upon results.

In sum, the supplier scorecard is not the be-all end-all of partner performance management. Instead, it is the tool that measures progress and indicates the problems that need to be addressed. And in order for it to be effective, it must be accompanied by clearly defined goals, trading partner communication and ongoing adjustments based upon results.