"Following the interview with Paul Woodlief on CPFR, Dr. Brady wanted to continue the conversation--so they did!

In addition to the application of CPFR, the DLA and the USAF started exploring internal collaboration using the common and commercially accepted S&OP processes. Paul talks about the additional benefits they found with S&OP and talks about the synergies he sees when combining S&OP and CPFR.

"The roots of Supply Chain Innovations Today go back to our founder's time in the US Air Force. In the Air Force, Dr Brady started as a logistician, working with the KC-135 and the FB-111A (and later the B1-B). During that time, and later at the Air Mobility Command as the Command's Reliability and Maintainability Manager, Dr Brady supported the operations and the modernization of the KC-135 aircraft.

Dr Brady had no problem stepping up to interview Paul Woodlief from the Defense Logistics Agency about the KC-135 and the continuing efforts between DLA and the USAF to support the airframe well into the middle of this new century. Not surprisingly, the Air Force and DLA found it necessary to apply the lessons and processes of the VICS Guidelines for Collaboration, Planning and Replenishment (CPFR) to meet the growing challenges of supporting the aging airframe.

Whether you are in the Department of Defense, or just want to learn about the value of collaboration, give this podcast a listen."

"In this interview we talk with Larry Smith, the Senior Vice President – Planning and Replenishment for West Marine. He has a long history with CPFR (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment) and with VICS. In addition he has been one of the key players working to bring out the latest CPFR Guideline "The Ultimate Retail Supply Chain Machine." We talk about the value that CPFR brings to the bottom line of the firm demonstrated over the nearly 20 years of collaborative supply chain efforts."

In this episode of the Voice of VICS Dr Steve Brady talks with Jim Tompkins, CEO of Tompkins International, about "Demand Driven Supply Chains." Jim discusses not only how to know what the actual demand is, but why it is useful to tie your supply chain to that demand, and how that approach can truly drive efficiencies throughout the supply chain. And don't forget, when you are talking about this level of detail, there must be some collaboration going on as well--so listen for CPFR to make it's way in!

In this interview Dr Brady talks with Ryan Donovan of States Logistics. They talk about the future of the 3PL industry and the benefits of 3PL consolidation. 3PLs are not just for the large manufacturers any more.

Lessons learned from those who were involved with Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR®) from the very beginning. This episode is with Marianne Timmons - Founder of Supply Chain 2020 As part of this series of articles about the beginnings of the CPFR movement, we're talking with Marianne Timmons, former VP Supply Chain Strategy for Wegmans Food Markets and founder of Supply Chain 2020. She talks about the importance of collaboration and her view that "is the only way that our industry will be able to achieve its ultimate self."

In this interview, I talk with Matt Johnson about the earliest days of CPFR­®, and in fact we go back to when it first started, and was known as CFAR. For those that go back far enough, we remember when CPFR® was the 9 Step model. In this interview, Matt reveals how it transformed into the "wheel" or "Quadrant" model we know today.

From the Interview: "More important than that depiction has the realization that CPFR needs to have variance because different companies have different business issues that they're trying to address through collaboration. I chaired a committee to define a process that we called retail event collaboration which takes promotional events and drives a collaboration based upon promotions certainly with forecasts and historical data there but as more of a validation point or background data. Others, like Fred Bowman of GDA, have worked on different models where you have distributor based collaboration and then more recently we've had a model where we've had assortment-based merchandise-driven collaboration for the fashion, apparel and specialty retail industries... What's nice is that CPFR has spawned processes that are more industry specific over time and that can be easily used by different pairs of trading partners as a guide to more effective collaboration. It's not just a one size fits all anymore."

In this Voice of VICS I talk with Andre Martin- co-founder Red Prairie Collaborative Flowcasting Group, LLC. He is considered the father of Distribution Resource Planning, or DRP. He talks about the early days, when he was developing the concept of DRP while working at Abbott, and how that has evolved into Flow Casting among other innovations. For those that don't know about DRP, it is a close relation to the familiar MRP and MRPII, and ERP.

Technical and political Lessons learned from those who were involved with Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR®) from the very beginning… Chris Sellers - Interim CEO, Mobeam In this installment of interviews about the beginnings of the CPFR movement, we interview Chris Sellers, who is currently the CEO of Mobeam. Previously, as CEO of Agentrics, Mr. Sellers led the world's leading retailers in business innovation; global sourcing/procurement; logistics; supply chain; and product lifecycle management and development. Chris was another central figure in the emergence of CPFR® while with Syncra Systems – a subsidiary of Benchmarking Partners and an early entrant in the B2B space in the late '90's.

In this interview (recorded LAST YEAR in anticipation of the 2010 VICS Achievement awards) I talk with Randy Salley, VP for Supply Chain IT at Hewlett-Packard. Mr Salley shares his thoughts on the value of collaboration. For this interview and more, visit VICS.org Check back--we will be sharing interviews leading up to THIS year's recognition of the VICS Annual Collaborative Commerce Achievement Award winners.

I conducted this interview with Leroy Allen, the VP for Logistics Planning and Forecasting at Lowe's. This interview was part of the preparation for VICS 13th Annual Collaborative Commerce Achievement Awards. Listen as Leroy shares some of the challenges they face and how Lowe's faces them in partnership with their trading partners.