Page 11 - Logistics News October 2016
P. 11
white paper
Achieving end-to-end visibility
in your outsourced supply chain
To run today’s supply
chains requires a new
paradigm, one that
extends what ERP has
done for the company
within its four walls to
the new reality of the
multi-enterprise supply
chain. This new paradigm
is called a Supply Chain
Operating Network. Here
are the lessons from the
leaders:
Connect and collaborate electronically: The Control the quality: For companies operating
modern approach is to leverage the cloud to in regulated industries (such as the food or
connect electronically to outsourcing partners. pharmaceutical industry) or where critical
With the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, manufacturing operations are outsourced (such
there is no need to force partners to install, run, as semiconductor manufacturing), companies
and maintain specific software applications. are also adding visibility into their partners’
Beyond the connectivity, a collaboration platform manufacturing operations.. For this, they connect
is needed to support the business interactions to the outside plants’ manufacturing execution
between the different trading partners, routing in systems (MES) to capture relevant manufacturing
both directions the information as required by the data at all stages of production. This provides
business – like an ERP system but for the entire the contracting company very granular factory
supply chain. Without such a platform, it is almost transaction visibility to track material flows,
impossible to enable the level of real-time visibility processing steps, and associated parameters such
and coordination among all supply chain partners as yields or test results.
that is needed.
Detect issues automatically: Exchanging
Get closer to the demand: Demand forecasts information in real-time across multiple supply
are only an educated guess of what the future chain partners without the tools to process
demand will be. More ambitious companies that information is like trying to drink from a
are now using such a network to capture vast fire hydrant. Leading companies have deployed
amounts of information to then feed into automated tools and applications to help
sophisticated sensing and planning solutions understand and tie together the information being
to better predict true demand. In the consumer exchanged and then detecting the exceptions
goods industry, this means going all the way to that need to be handled. A key capability is to
point-of-sale (POS) data or even using signals like harmonize and connect the different data being
weather forecasts, housing starts or marketing exchanged. Processing the information, placing
spend – any data relevant to the business. In the it into context, and raising alerts when required
enterprise world, companies are looking at the must all be automated, as there is too much
Internet of Things to help them better anticipate information to handle manually. Applications
demand. This improved demand picture is then that not only show exceptions but also provide
propagated through the cloud-based network to visibility into the root causes are particularly
all parties. useful. •
18 October 2016 | Logistics News
