If we look back a few decades, there was a lot less expectation from customers to be able to secure goods, especially gifts at the last minute, and in particular not from international brands from around the world across borders. This indicates a clear shift in the global supply chain network, not only highlighting that it has become more interconnected and deeply rooted but also more optimised.
Any business in today’s economy will recognise the importance of ensuring that their supply chain is optimised as any failure in it will lead to incurred loss of revenue and costs resolving the problem. With the high consumer expectations it is a requirement for businesses to have supply chains which are reactive and almost pre-emptive when trying to match supply and demand.
As stated by Dr Ratcliff, PhD in supply chain optimisation “Automation has reduced some manual costs, but further optimisation and correct decisions could reduce costs by 10-40%”. Here are a few key features listed by Dr Ratcliff that are required to optimise your Supply chain.
Integration must support fully automated data transfer – One of the key issues when trying to model or be reactive to demand changes is the silo-ing of data. Considering the large amount of data which goes into supply chains and logistics, any manual processing leads to risk of human error as well as being timely. The data must be accurate, timely and comprehensive. Data drives supply chains and logistics so it needs to be delivered on time when making the execution as well as accurate.
1. Delivery must be in a form that facilitates execution, management, and control. Supply chain will only be optimised if the Technical Ops can execute and plan whilst management can assess the ROI. This requires the ability to use the latest integration technology to assess data and workflows from the business from end to end in what referred to as windowpane GUI.
2. Continuously Improve and Optimise – Supply chain optimisation is not just utilising technology in the short term but constantly changing and being dynamic so that the logistics operations is always fully utilised.
3. Finally, the ROI must be provable and quantifiable with the cost of people, tech, and operations. As with any investment or change, it will not be free and requires significant integration so needs an honest assessment of cost.
At MDB we have helped many organisations with their supply chain optimisation This not only involves delivery of strategy and transformation projects but also through technical implementation of solutions such as Control-M software by BMC.
Find out more on our website www.mdbsc.co.uk and learn how we can help you.