SUPPLY CHAIN CONTROL TOWER (INTRODUCTION)

We are now living in a modern world that is more linked than ever before. Supply chains can become increasingly complicated, especially at the global level. So therefore the supply chain must evolve to meet new demands and supply chain challenges.?For example, If you are working with a supply chain management you are facing these kind of?problems for quite sometimes, increasing costs throughout the chain, complexity due to multiple channels to market,?and lack of quality and service improvement, If these issues have been bothering you all day and the company’s current supply chain processes do not give you a satisfactory answer, your cost are rising, customers are going away and profits are going down it’s time for you to switch to supply chain tower.??

A Supply Chain Control Tower is not a physical tower nor is it a software product. It is mainly defined as linked, customized dashboard of data, key business metrics and events across the supply chain. It’s a centralized hub containing all the technology, organizational tools, and processes needed to capture data from all stages of the supply chain coupled with trained manpower to handle them from the manufacturer to the consumer.

The chain control tower will give you a single view over every site across every region from your supplier to end customers and the global picture yet drill down into the details to see every order and its status, shipment and tracker on the real time. It will also show the arrival of the shipments at each facility and when they were delivered to each customers. Through the chain tower, the organization will see the potential issues that may emerge in the future. And with the help of the artificial intelligences, it will identify the best solutions and apply them quickly before the issues develop in a full-blown problems.

Control towers can change the operation at all levels of the supply chain. The tower provides a central platform for examining the end-to-end supply chain, along with the ability to make real-time decisions based on the recommendation of data-driven artificial intelligence.?When properly executed, the impact of a control tower is far-reaching.

·?????End-to-End Visibility.

Visibility across supply chain partners, including suppliers, contract manufacturers, transportation carriers, third-party logistics. The supply chain control tower allows the organizations and companies to have a transparency at all stages of supply chain management from procurement through delivery of finished goods to customers. There are various uncontrollable scenarios that may encounter over time from bad weather, delays, emergency shipments, inventory loss, and more. Ultimately, the level of visibility plays a part where end-to-end contact is required. Supply chain control towers offer the needed visibility to detect exceptions in real-time. The period between exceptions and resolutions is greatly minimized. This approach reduces the time it takes to detect and resolve exceptions.?

·?????Autonomous Decision Maker Process.

The control tower will automatically execute the necessary and effectively process. By taking all the important data and information, supply chain control tower can find the best and efficient strategy the company should implement. This approach to autonomy will transform your business process with the power of data that previously would require several human hours in?research to achieve define goals. The decision-making abilities of the supply chain control tower are one of its key features and possibly the future of the whole industry.?

·?????Early warning alerts and exception management?

The platform uses predictive data for a more accurate forecasting and decision-making, resolving supply chain disruptions before they happen.

·?????Saving Time and Money

????????As control towers anticipates fortuitous events, operators can reduce supply chain risk, avoid unexpected costs, and more accurately gauge supply and demand consumption, location and delivery time estimates. This information provides data to analyze trends and make sure shipments are always on time or allows for real-time adjustments to measure KPIs or verify supplier performance.

·?????Real-time tracking

Through collaborative information sharing?– share information and collaborate in real-time

·?????Improve on-time deliveries

Better insights and accurate information help companies improve their delivery rates. An optimized control tower helps them achieve this important goal.?

·?????Enhanced Productivity.

As the control tower reduced time between exception identification, problem resolution and increased sharing and collaboration with trade partners, organizations can increased speed, reliability, and adaptability of their supply chain operations.?

Control towers are used to enhance the visibility in ‘complex’ supply chains. Your supply chain qualifies as complex when:

• Many supply chain activities are outsourced
• Your customers’ service requirements are increasingly challenging
• The dependency is high
• The scope is global or inter/intra-continental

Supply chain control towers are very complex system. Detailed and accurate information, data retrieval and analysis is key to success. Despite advancements in the field of machine learning, artificial intelligence cannot recommend improvements without accurate, standardized data.

Remember as well that as a cloud-based solution, a control tower needs robust defenses against data breaches and hacking. The security of your data is only as strong as that of your weakest supply chain partner.

That said, we’re far off from perfect technology—there isn’t yet an AI-driven control tower system out there that doesn’t require human assets to automate and oversee its more complex components. As you assemble a supply chain control tower, be on the lookout for qualified, skilled professionals to maintain it.?

1.?Planning: staff with a background in supply chains

2.?Event management: staff with a background in transport operations

3.?Business intelligence: staff with a background in operational improvement

4.?Management of supply chain partners: staff with a background in 3PLs

5.?IT management: handling IT tools to exchange data with supply chain partners (suppliers, manufacturers, 3PLs and carriers) as well as internal system management to store the data in a structured way and provide information to support the control tower functions

Some companies have the skills, technology, and resources needed to build their own control towers. Outsourcing gives you access to proprietary chain management systems, which will be maintained and updated by the third-party provider. Outsourcing allows for faster tower integration and results.

Your decision on whether or not to outsource a control tower depends on these factors:

• If it is feasible to enhanced the above-mentioned operational and IT capabilities in-house
• The business case behind the investment required for an in-house solution vs. the indirect costs associated with outsourcing
• The volatility of the workload and the reaching of a certain critical mass

In traditional insourced practice, a centralized hub provides visibility by integrating IT platforms on a local to global level to gain full coverage on the functional scope.

In outsourced model along with functional integration of IT platforms, there is more focus on planning, future impact, visibility and strategic solutions such as structural designing.

Collaboration, Visibility and Integrations are the ingredients to make a supply chain a great supply chain. Imagine you have a great planning system of orders, and being released in time to your consumers. But it doesn’t always mean that the consumers will get their ordered products in time. Many things can go wrong from the time you send the orders to your consumers and the time products actually arrives to warehouse, you need a tight coordination and collaboration with you customers. You will currently manages this collaboration manually: email, phone calls to follow up with the suppliers. Multiple spreadsheets to manage orders status.?

Using a Supply Chain Control Tower streamlines this process. It will provides the dashboard status from the suppliers to freight forwarders to warehouse operators to consumers. The Supply Control Tower is one common system for effective collaboration, visibility and integration.

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