Supply Chain Management

Advanced Logistics in the Factory of the Future

Higher levels of automation and flexibility help manufacturers offset labor shortages while boosting service and safety.

Gauging the Risks of Raw-Material Volatility

Manufacturers can use an assessment framework to anticipate and prepare for future market disruptions.

Emphasize Resilience in Supply Chains

Today’s conditions bring more complexity to the supply chain officer role—perhaps even redefining it—as businesses face the threat of economic slowdown while trying to find new opportunities.

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How to Fix Broken Supply Chains

In the face of disruptions, from natural disasters to pandemics, how do we make sure supply chains can keep up? Dustin Burke, BCG managing director and partner, offers a combination of solutions to help create a more resilient, efficient tomorrow.

BCG Executive Perspectives: The CEO’s Dilemma

In this series, we examine the disruptive forces that are bearing down on business leaders today, so that they can understand where opportunities exist amid the uncertainty.

Procurement

The Changing Role of the Procurement Organization

For procurement organizations, today's uncertainty has made risk mitigation and cost reduction tougher than ever. Learning lessons from the pandemic will be key to survival and sustainable competitive advantage. See below for the critical steps that teams can take to overcome current shocks and withstand futures ones.

Green Public Procurement: Catalyzing the Net-Zero Economy

Public procurement accounts for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions annually. Because governments can create demand for clean energy technologies, they can have a direct impact on reducing the world’s carbon footprint.

The Future of Procurement for Pharma Operations

Companies that lead the way in initiating and scaling up a transformation will gain significant advantages in cost and risk management.

Profit from the Source: BCG’s New Book

To succeed in challenging times, CEOs must do the seemingly impossible: capture cost savings while achieving additional competitive advantages, including innovation, sustainability, and resilience. CEOs can do all of this by taking what may seem like a surprising step: empowering their procurement function to liberate new value from their top supplier relationships.

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Manufacturing

3D Printing Helps Realize the Promise of Distributed Manufacturing

Combining distributed and additive manufacturing mitigates supply chain risks by enabling fully digital interactions, better economics for producing small quantities, and flexible capacity.

Boosting Resilience with Production as a Service

Producers can address critical challenges by designing flexible factories, sharing assets, and decoupling factory ownership and use.

The Automation Revolution in Manufacturing

The technologies needed to overcome many longstanding barriers to shop floor automation—and the skills needed to use them in combination—are finally available.

BCG-WEF Project: Unlocking Value in Manufacturing Through Data

By leveraging data and advanced analytics, companies can provide better products and services, optimize their value chains, and maximize return on capital. Effective data-sharing applications are essential to define key success factors and to enable manufacturers to derive value from their data.

Service & Support

The Service Factory of the Future

Giant call centers, commodity offerings, and rigid scripts for dealing with customers will give way to agile, AI-enabled organizations that combine hyperpersonalization with ultraindustrialization.

Smart Simplicity in Global Business Services

Now is the time to reduce complexity in GBS. This can help companies achieve excellence and transform customer experience.

Redefining Customer Service for the Future

Leaders who have stabilized their contact center operations must now think about harnessing the positive changes unleashed by the crisis.

Rethink Support Functions to Lead Through Tough Times

Excellent functional level strategies can yield cost savings, offer greater customer satisfaction, provide a more responsive platform for driving transformation—and sharpen your company’s competitive edge.

Capital Project Management

Secrets Behind Successful Large Capex Projects

To keep projects on track, managers must excel on multiple fronts–including fostering transparency into project challenges, encouraging collaboration among all stakeholders, and candidly assessing project risks.

Think Big

Behind Think Big is transparency and collaboration. That's how BCG conceives a successful large capital project. Let’s think big to make big things happen.

The Serial Innovation Imperative

In a turbulent, fast-changing world, innovation success means getting it right over and over again.

Operational Excellence

Net-Zero Trucks? Yes, It’s Possible.

The trucks used in industries like mining and agriculture burn diesel and emit a lot of CO2. Fortunately, replacement solutions exist—if companies understand the costs and benefits.

The Soft Side of Operational Transformation

Half the battle in transformations is overcoming mental roadblocks to change in the organization. Here’s what leaders can learn from behavioral science to improve the odds of success.