Streamlining Complex Manufacturing with Oracle's Connected Supply Chain

Manufacturing operations are becoming increasingly complex in today's fast-changing business environment. Shorter product lifecycles, pressure for mass customization, globalized supply chains, and fluctuating customer demands are creating significant challenges for manufacturers. Companies need agile and adaptive supply chains to thrive in this volatility. Oracle's connected supply chain solutions enable organizations to meet these challenges by providing end-to-end visibility, coordination, and data-driven insights across the value chain.

The Challenges of Complex Manufacturing

Complex manufacturing involves production processes that consist of many interconnected components, require advanced skills, and produce highly engineered products. Some key characteristics include:

• High mix, low volume - Frequent changes in product configurations, components, production methods etc. rather than long production runs of standardized items.
• Stringent quality requirements - Precise specifications must be met given the mission-critical nature of components. Even small defects can lead to product failures in the field.
• Global supply networks - Sourcing and production are distributed across widespread supplier and contract manufacturer networks, leading to long lead times and reduced flexibility.
• Compliance demands - Strict regulatory and internal standards must be adhered to, especially in highly regulated industries like aerospace, defense, and medical devices.
• After-sales support - Providing maintenance, repair, and overhaul services to extend product lifecycles can be logistically challenging.
• Talent shortages - Finding skilled technical talent is difficult, negatively impacting production output and innovation capabilities.

These realities make supply chain management tremendously difficult. Fluctuations in demand, supply, product configurations, and production schedules are now the norm. Lack of end-to-end supply chain visibility severely impedes a company's ability to respond to changes. Supply chain silos also prevent the free flow of information and coordination across functional areas and partner networks.

Manual paper-based processes are far too sluggish for today's needs. Significant lags and errors occur when relying on Excel spreadsheets, whiteboards, and disconnected systems to manage operations. The costs of supply chain inefficiency and instability are immense - from missed delivery dates to poor product quality. Manufacturers need digital capabilities to streamline their complex multi-tier supply networks.

Introducing Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM

Oracle provides a full suite of supply chain applications called Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM to help organizations overcome modern manufacturing challenges. The solutions provide real-time visibility, collaboration, and intelligent insights across the value chain - from suppliers to production to customers. Key capabilities include:

End-to-End Orchestration

Oracle allows businesses to model their complete supply network within a digital twin by connecting suppliers, logistics partners, contract manufacturers, quality teams, and other entities. This enables parallel orchestration of activities across all network partners through real-time data sharing.

Constraints and disruptions anywhere can be immediately identified and mitigated through collaborative workflows across the ecosystem. Issues no longer propagate unchecked due to poor visibility. Partners can coordinate schedules, capacities, inventory buffers, and other parameters to smooth overall supply network operations.

Multi-Tier Visibility

The inability to view inventory levels, purchase orders, quality information etc. beyond the first-tier suppliers is a huge blind spot. Oracle enables a multi-tier view across many supplier tiers as well as internal production statuses. Businesses gain full visibility into both upstream and downstream supply chain nodes - removing uncertainty around component availability, delays, capacities etc.

Digital Twin Modeling

Oracle Fusion SCM allows businesses to create digital twins of their supply networks, combining virtual modeling and simulations with real-time operating data. Network planners can assess impact of changes through "what-if" modeling before implementation. The digital twin continuously assimilates sensor IoT data from machines and tracking devices. Machine learning algorithms rapidly analyze this data to detect anomalies, predict disruptions, and prescribe corrective actions.

Intelligent Planning

Sophisticated algorithms assist in creation of feasible production, inventory and fulfillment plans. The system runs through numerous permutations of supply, demand, and resource constraints to generate optimal plans aligned with business objectives. As new inputs arise, the algorithms rapidly re-compute updated plans to keep pace with change. Bias-free machine driven planning thus replaces intuition-based manual planning.

AI and Advanced Analytics

Embedded artificial intelligence capabilities leverage machine learning to uncover hidden insights from vast data sets. Anomaly detection identifies deviations from baseline supply chain patterns to catch potential disruptions before they occur. Diagnostic algorithms figure out the root cause of issues. Simulation models quantify "what-if" tradeoff analyses for different mitigation scenarios. Prescriptive recommendations guide users on optimal decision-making.

Control Tower Orchestration

Oracle offers control tower visibility across end-to-end supply chain processes. Exceptions and critical events are flagged through real-time monitoring of IoT sensor streams, supply chain transaction data, and other information sources. When disruptions occur, the impact is contained through coordinated workflows. The control tower screens highlight supply chain hot spots and mobilize responses from relevant teams through chatbots.

Connected Manufacturing

Oracle Fusion CM provides real-time production monitoring, rapid re-planning, quality management and proactive maintenance capabilities for manufacturing operations. IoT inputs on equipment performance are fused with production schedules, product genealogy, and other context for better decision-making. Digital Andon boards visualize emerging issues on the shop floor. Problems are resolved through prevention rather than reaction.

unified Data Foundation

Synchronizing supply chain data across myriad applications and siloed repositories is extremely challenging. Oracle’s data foundation integrates related information via a common data model. This provides a “single version of the truth” that synchronizes processes and ensures reliable cross-functional reporting. Master data management and data governance disciplines improve integrity.

Business Impact of Oracle Fusion SCM

Streamlining supply chain complexity with Oracle Fusion SCM provides tremendous performance improvements:

• Lead time reductions of 25-50% by eliminating delays and expediting orders
• On time delivery improvements of 15-25% through tighter supply and production coordination
• Faster new product introduction cycles by 30-50% through parallel workflows
• Inventory reductions of 20-40% by smoothing flows and eliminating buffers
• Improved supplier quality by over 40% through real-time collaboration
• Revenue boost of 5-8% by fulfilling demand reliably and reactively
• Lower operational costs by reducing expedited shipments, overtime, and quality issues

With Oracle, manufacturers can optimize their supply chains holistically rather than sub-optimizing functions in silos. Let us look at how Oracle Fusion SCM specifically helps overcome some key challenges:

Taming Supply Chain Complexity

For global manufacturing giants like Flex, managing tens of thousands of BOMs, hundreds of plants and DCs, and thousands of value chain partners was intensely chaotic. Oracle Cloud SCM provided the end-to-end visibility and coordination capabilities to smooth Flex's supply chain. Flex saw on-time delivery improve from 78% to 95% - a huge gain worth over $200 million annually. It also reduced lead times by 99% - from months to under a day.

Fixing the Planning Headache

Morrison Utility Services oversees highly complex mobile asset maintenance and field workforce operations across millions of miles of utility infrastructure. Fragmented legacy systems led to poor visibility and unreliable field service schedules. By adopting Oracle Cloud SCM and Cloud EPM, Morrison established centralized planning capabilities across assets, inventory, logistics, and work orders. This enabled integrated planning rather than 100+ complex Excel spreadsheets. Optimization algorithms ensured maximized field workforce productivity.

Accelerating Time to Market

Shortening new product launch cycles is critical in technology industries. Arrow Electronics coordinates design, sourcing, production, and delivery of thousands of components. With Oracle, Arrow consolidated component data into a single repository, ensuring consistent BOM information. Real-time design, supply, and production data synchronization with suppliers removed delays. Arrow slashed product introduction cycle times from 20 weeks to just 4 weeks.

Improving Quality Proactively

Defects are hugely expensive in complex manufacturing environments. Medical device maker Convatec saw costly quality issues arise from paper-based processes, spreadsheets, and lack of standardized procedures. By digitalizing quality management on Oracle Cloud, quality protocols were systematized. IoT data flagged anomalies predictive of failures, allowing issues to be fixed proactively. This drove an 80% reduction in quality-related costs.

Responding Nimbly to Disruptions

With suppliers spanning the globe, manufacturing disruptions can quickly snowball into lost output and sales. Renewable energy firm Goldwind used manual processes to manage their 600+ supplier base. With Oracle Cloud SCM, they gained real-time visibility into 10000+ component delivery statuses. Predictive algorithms identify late deliveries even before suppliers report them, allowing rapid mitigation. Production plans adapt within hours rather than weeks earlier.

Transitioning to Oracle Fusion SCM

Given the transformations enabled by Oracle Cloud SCM, the journey to adopt these solutions can deliver tremendous value. However, manufacturers need structured approaches to harness the full potential given the complexities of their technical landscapes. Key steps for a successful implementation include:

• Re-mapping end-to-end value streams from raw material to end-customer delivery to spot digitization opportunities
• Analyzing pain points related to visibility constraints, lack of coordination, unreliable planning etc. to build the business case
• Starting with targeted pain point solutions and achieving quick wins before expanding to broader supply chain processes
• Providing extensive training and change management to build user confidence in the new systems
• Integrating newer digital data sets like IoT and blockchain with legacy information systems for a more holistic data foundation
• Leveraging cloud elasticity for faster implementation and to support digital innovations via extensions
• Using built-in automation and self-service configuration to accelerate rollout and reduce customizations
• Tracking KPI improvements around revenue, costs, working capital, service levels etc. to validate ROI

Conclusion

Complex manufacturing brings intense supply chain challenges ranging from global disruptions to taming product proliferation. Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM solutions enable manufacturers to thrive amidst complexity through unparalleled resilience, agility, and optimization. By connecting end-to-end supply chain data, processes, and partners digitally, Oracle empowers users to streamline even the most complicated multi-tier value chains. The journey to cloud-based supply chain transformation requires careful change management but delivers enormous performance dividends. With Oracle, manufacturers can conquer complexity and achieve a truly connected, intelligent, and collaborative supply chain.