ERP Systems

Clorox Expecting Major Supply Chain Improvements with ERP Implementation

Clorox expects to begin realizing gains from migrating its U.S. supply chain to a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with expected productivity improvements through more efficient planning and lower inventory levels.

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a software platform that integrates core business processes like finance, HR, manufacturing, supply chain, and sales into a single centralized hub for shared access and streamlined decision making, lessening the need for departmental spreadsheets.

Clorox

By James Kirby Easterling|2026-09-27T03:28:56+00:00September 25, 2026|Tags: cost management, digitization upgrades, efficiencies, ERP, optimization|

Amazon AWS Outage Illustrates Outsourcing Risk

AWS, Amazon’s cloud service, hosts applications and provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies around the world.

An outage at AWS’s northern Virginia cluster on October 20, 2025, prevented applications from finding the correct address for AWS’s database to store user information and other critical data.

The disruption caused outages across websites and platforms that use AWS’s cloud infrastructure. The downtime translated to “millions in lost productivity and revenue” for thousands of companies from food delivery to airline […]

By Anita Lee-Post, Ph.D.|2025-11-07T08:59:27+00:00November 7, 2025|Tags: cloud computing, ERP, resilience, supply chain disruption|

Hershey Invests $250M in Supply Chain Agility and Automation

U.S. chocolate maker, Hershey, is planning to spend $250 million to build agility and efficiency in its operations through a project called Advancing Agility and Automation Initiative (AAA).

With an ERP integration, Hershey’s AAA is set to digitize and automate its processes, optimize procurement and manufacturing, accelerate R&D, and increase visibility throughout its supply chain.

Video Spotlight:

Unwrapping efficiency: How Hershey leveraged SAP to revolutionize trade promotion (Apr 11, 2024, PwC US)

This post is based on […]

By Anita Lee-Post, Ph.D.|2024-11-17T11:12:30+00:00November 17, 2024|Tags: agility, automation, efficiency, ERP, MRP, technology|

AI and OM: A Complicated Relationship

AI has ushered in a new era of possibilities.

Once confined to complex, industrial applications, AI is now becoming part of our everyday activities. Recent advances in AI-generated art and text have created many possibilities. Although the technology cannot fully replace humans yet, improvements are so rapid that we can expect a dramatic transformation of work in the near future. The challenge for organizations will be to harness AI’s capabilities while countering its negative, unintended consequences.

This post is intended to help […]

By Corinne M. Karuppan, Ph.D.|2023-04-15T22:25:12+00:00April 16, 2023|Tags: artificial intelligence, automation, bill of materials, ERP systems, job design, product design, productivity, robots, security|