RL - Manufacturing

Becoming a Proactive Supply Chain Organization

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axway.com 3 Becoming proactive for command and control If you want to run a proactive supply chain, you must recognize that each stakeholder in a well-run operation is expected to achieve measurable performance objectives. These objectives have to map to the organization's customer commitments — deliver the customer order on time; have the customer order ready for pick-up; on-board suppliers within defined SLAs; ship the right amount of ordered widget; process payment on time, etc. Performance objectives also need to align with regulatory compliance obligations as well as current business drivers supporting strategic initiatives (for instance, improving the customer experience, increasing operational efficiency, boosting top- line revenue, or mitigating risk). To transform your organization from reactive to proactive, you need to empower individuals to focus on what is most important for achieving their operational objectives. That means equipping each person with tools that enable real- time E2E visibility, analytics and actionable intelligence so they can proactively resolve issues that may otherwise block operational objectives. Let's take a closer look at these tools. E2E visibility is achieved by tracking and tracing transactions and files through all business steps and silos (inbound and outbound) in real time. E2E visibility typically answers "where is my file?" for IT production support staff, and "where is my order?" for supply chain operations and customer services personnel. Analytics serve two purposes: • They provide situational awareness by analyzing and correlating data within a defined operational context to make a specific group of people recognize a situation that requires their attention. This capability reduces the latency between when information is available and when a decision is made. For instance, alerting supply chain operations that ASNs do not reconcile with purchase orders before SLAs are missed; or that a lower than usual number of orders is currently processed and may indicate problems with the e-commerce infrastructure or with a 3PL. • They provide predictive insight to assess the risk of missing time-based events such as customer order delivery deadlines and SLAs. Actionable intelligence is information tailored to individual needs, delivered at the correct time, and with the proper context to take immediate action. The response could be an individual acting on information displayed on a dashboard or received from an email alert, or an action that is triggered automatically. For instance, suppose a purchase order is accepted late after an SLA violation, which would normally require an expedited fulfillment process and a rescheduling of distribution center operations. An automated action could save time by identifying such SLA violations and automatically triggering the fulfillment process workflow. Figure 1. Providing each supply chain stakeholder with the right combination of E2E visibility, analytics and actionable intelligence empowers them to proactively resolve issues that may otherwise block achievement of operational objectives Executive Customer Services Sales & Operations Planning Compliance Group Supply Chain Operations IT Production Support Actionable intelligence Fix situation prior to impacting business and customers Reduce decision-making latency Continuous improvement E2E visibility Track and trace across silos Analytics What is happening now? What is at risk? Why is this happening? What happened?

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