Target has been extremely active in its supply chain recently, with naturally most of the focus on Omnichannel commerce. That included announcing last year a fast track plan to move to item-level RFID to improve inventory accuracy in support of store-level ecommerce fulfillment and order on-line, pick up in store. (See Target Stores Latest to Jump on Item-Level RFID Bandwagon .) Then just a few weeks ago, Target announced it had hired former Amazom.com executive Arthur Valdez to head its global supply chain, though Amazon is now challenging that hiring in court, saying Valdez violated the non-compete agreement he had at Amazon. Amazon says that 2012 agreement requires an 18-month hiatus before Valdez can take a position with similar responsibilities at a rival firm. With Omnichannel, fulfillment now can potentially come from almost any node in the network – including supplier sites – and increasing there is the need to forecast at the store level, not just a DCs. Now news that Amazon is investing in a new generation of software applications, largely built in-house, to improve inventory management, order sourcing, and more in an Ommichannel world, part of its on-going major investment in Omnichannel, which last year topped $1 billion. As reported this week in CIO magazine, Target is modernizing a supply chain that was built based on a traditional linear model, in which goods predictably flowed from the manufacturer to one of its distribution centers and then to the shelves of one of its 1,800 stores. That model simply no longer works, Target says. "We need to get the fundamentals in place and that’s because the stress and strain we put on our supply chain today is very different to what was the case four or five years ago," Target CIO Mike McNamara told CIO.com. To that […]