As the focus on securing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) supply chains intensifies, the number of standards and guidelines is increasing at a troubling pace. These well-intended efforts to provide a framework for security may very well be “cooking the global ICT supply chain goose,” without moving the security needle. For more on this challenge see SC Magazine from the CSO’s Desk: The proliferation of mandates.
Tags: secure supply chain, security, supply chain
I am pleased to announce that Cisco has released its tenth annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report. The 2014 Cisco CSR Report outlines our strategy to use our expertise, technology, and partnerships for social, environmental, and business impact.
Each day, people around the world face many challenges: access to quality education, unemployment, poverty, and climate change, to name a few. We’ve learned that when we bring people together, they find innovative solutions to address these problems. And when you add technology to the mix, we can multiply our impact and uncover even greater opportunities.
For example, in France, a team of Cisco Networking Academy students used the connections between people, process, data, and things to create a networked walking stick for the blind. Watch this video to learn more:
Our CSR Report contains many more examples like this, organized according to five pillars:
Here are just a few highlights from our 2014 CSR Report:
Tags: corporate social responsibility, CSR, employees, environment, Governance, society, supply chain
Blog authored by Chet Namboodri, Cisco and Marieke Wijtkamp, Librestream
Sub-Zero is a family owned business and, perhaps, best known as the developer of the first cabinet built-in refrigerator in the 1950s. Today, the company is the leading manufacturer of luxury appliances in North America, selling its top-of-the-line appliances worldwide. Sub-Zero employs more than 1,000 workers, with production facilities in Madison, WI, Richmond, KY, and, now, Goodyear, AZ. They are also a world-class example of a company who’s leveraging the Internet of Everything to drive innovation and who truly embodies the renaissance in American manufacturing.
Accelerating New Product Introduction (NPI) Cycles
In order to prepare for the largest product roll-out in the company’s history–60 new appliance models across refrigeration and its premium cooking brand, Wolf–Sub-Zero needed a top-notch, end-to-end network to provide flexible communication and collaboration between its engineering groups, the existing factories in Madison, and the new production facility in Goodyear. In addition, Sub Zero needed to ensure robust communication and diagnostic data exchange with external suppliers and installation partners. Dubbed the “New Generation Collaboration Initiative,” Sub-Zero worked with Cisco and Librestream to aid the design, launch, and ongoing manufacture of its new products.
Tags: customer story, Internet of Everything, internet of things, IoE, IoT, librestream, Manufacturing, Sub Zero, supply chain
Sooner or later we all feel like throwing up our hands and cursing the complexity of modern life. But while technology may seem the chief culprit in making things unmanageable, it is also the ultimate solution to complexity.
In the Internet of Everything (IoE) era, it is particularly important for business leaders to understand the power of technology to simplify our lives and support 
informed decision making. And this was a core theme at Sapphire Now 2014, an event in Orlando, Fla., that I was privileged to attend last week.
By using network technology to integrate people, process, data, and things, IoE counters complexity in unprecedented ways. In a city, this can involve something as simple as cutting the time it takes to find a (connected) parking space. Or IoE technologies can scale up to reroute traffic lights; for example, to head-off highway backups before, during, and after a large event.
In a brick-and-mortar retail setting (a key area of discussion at Sapphire Now), IoE can alleviate the complexity of managing customers, staffing, and products. With data from multiple sources comes heightened, real-time awareness, empowering managers to react faster than ever. For example, they can then stock shelves and reorganize staff in response to constantly changing levels of demand. With predictive analytics they can even respond before a customer rush begins.
The idea of hyper-aware, real-time decision-making resonated during a Sapphire Now panel discussion titled Thrive in the Digital Networks of the New Economy. I was honored to share the panel with such luminaries as Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT; Michael Chui of McKinsey Global Institute; and Jai Shekhawat, Deepak Krishnamurthy, and Vivek Bapat of SAP. And there was much discussion on the impact of bad decisions on failed organizations. Which is why we all take such an interest in technology that enables good ones.
Tags: asset utilization, Big Data, Cisco, Cisco Consulting Services, connected supply chain, customer experience, decision making, employee productivity, innovation, Internet of Everything, internet of things, IoE, IoE Value Index, IoT, Manufacturing, retail, Smart Cities, supply chain, value at stake
Congratulations to the Cisco Supply Chain Operations (CSCO) team. For seven consecutive years, Cisco has placed in the Top 10 of Gartner’s prestigious ranking!
Led by Cisco Senior VP John Kern, the supply chain operations team here at Cisco has undergone an extensive transformation and continues to be recognized globally as a best-in-class practitioner. With more than a thousand contract manufacturing and component suppliers, logistics (3PL) and other service partners, along with more than 25,000 orderable product IDs—which are broadly mixed amongst build cycles of engineer-to-order, configure-to-order, build-to-order and build-to-stock—the complexity and global scale of what our Cisco-resident supply chain gurus deal with on a daily basis could be staggering for some organizations but is managed with excellence by CSCO. Beyond the outstanding development and fulfillment supply chain and manufacturing management services rendered, CSCO has served as a tremendous expert asset and executive connection for our go-to-market expansion with manufacturing customers’ lines of business, particularly related to the Internet of Everything (IoE) market transition.
The splashy ad below illustrating a vision for the Internet of Things (IoT) has become much more of a reality and the technologies and products shown are in use within Cisco’s supply chain ecosystem today.
Recently, two Cisco colleagues — Edna Conway, VP CSCO and Chief Security Officer and Bob Dean, Director, Manufacturing and Energy Vertical, co-authored an excellent article for Manufacturing Leadership Journal entitled ‘The Fourth Dimension of Supply Chains’. The article highlights how new technologies are empowering supply chains as never before, and how they are also exposing enterprises and ecosystems to new risks. Cisco’s comprehensive approach to mitigate risks and bolster confidence across the supply chain focuses on the four areas of malicious modification/substitution of technology, counterfeit products (both raw materials and finished goods), the security component of supply chain resiliency and misuse of intellectual property.
Discipline surrounding that fourth topic of securing intellectual property has become an even greater concern in the face of new business models and innovations with the application of IoE in manufacturing. Best-in-class manufacturers are, like Cisco, increasingly leveraging their supply chains and ecosystems to develop offering portfolios balanced between sustaining and disruptive innovations that are derived from scrutinized customer segmentation and guided by such principles as value-driven design discipline, cross-BU portfolio platform awareness and rationalization, differentiated solution-service bundling, and connected system-level lifecycle services (e.g., Product as a Service). All of these design and innovation processes require immersive and intimate collaboration with customers and across supply chains.
Cisco’s relevance to enable manufacturing supply chain and innovation strategies to achieve more transformative business outcomes has never been greater:
What are some of the challenges, innovations and opportunities in your global supply chain today? Join the conversation below and let me know. Thanks for reading.
Tags: ACI, Cisco, Internet of Everyting, IoE, Manufacturing, supply chain
