Supply Chain Planning FUTURE THINKING
The already complicated Supply Chain Planning (SC) tool gain significant complexity due to COVID-19. Without delay, industries of all kinds started pressing for better SC demand volatility strategies and building more robust sourcing materials and goods from suppliers.
Nowadays, organisations want to introduce cutting-edge technology in the company’s SC that stretches out farther than just a pandemic response. Hereafter some solutions:
- The escalation of Digital Supply Chain transformation
Stop putting Digital Supply Planning transformation off. Current studies show that almost 70% of companies invest in it as their highest priority strategy, the focal point on resilience and agility.
The COVID pandemic put several SCs in a poor situation; they learned pretty fast to be ready to respond to sizeable-harsh disruptive events. Both demand ambiguity and supply precariousness will challenge their processes when delivering top service-level objectives and high business outcomes.
There is a deep understanding that disruptions can materialise abruptly and that SCs demand edge-technology, giving rise to robust resilient-agile response to grant more capable visibility.
- The exponential growth of Planning skills supporting SC resilience
When disruptions occur, successful SCs experts can show the resilience and preparedness they built in advance, so keep recovering from the crisis and get used to the many-everlasting shifts in demand and supply. Leaders anticipate that organisations would develop better resilience within their SCs by setting up or escalating multi-echelon distribution networks, consolidated planning and simulation competencies, and scenario planning.
Besides other uses, organisations can use it to evaluate the effect of ups and downs in supply factors; for instance, extended lead times, shifts in supplier’s limitations, and ordering frequencies on stockpile aims.
- The emerging of Cloud platforms for collaborative SC
A Cloud platform provides the best organisation for holding multiple-SC partners to collaboratively put forward improved-services, encompassing procurement, sourcing, planning, logistics, and spare parts management. Top Cloud providers will keep offering these platforms since no-one else has the structural design, dimension, and relevance when managing this working pattern for numerous software suppliers.
These Cloud architectures are currently developing strengthen-uncomplicated-application integration, besides analytics competencies, security, and other services. With a single-accessible Cloud platform, planning and managing logistics will sync with material handling, heading to reliable-improved transportation alongside SC planning.
- Best-of-breed (BoB) solutions will stand at the front.
Open Cloud platforms are on the rise; therefore, industry consultants and analysts should propose single- platform solutions seldom used as Best-of-Breed (BoB) that is not getting the drive. The system integrators would then shift to integrating these solutions inside open clouds. For instance, you could operate a database and an inventory optimisation incorporated in a Google data lake.
- SCs will be more local, focusing more on alternative sourcing and substitution options.
Resilience will be crucial when optimising existing supply to accomplish improved service level through the digital model’s operational commitments to get the supplier’s focus on further planning improvements.
Organisations should look ahead to the allocation and cut downs of SCs. They better balance higher manufacturing costs than reduced-inventory costs, lower freight/logistics cost, lower duties, taxes, etc.
Notably, the advantages of much-better resiliency, certainty, and more-rapidly-reaction times indicate considerably less buffering to act in response to all types of disruptions.
Summing up: 2021 brings us multiple opportunities as a better Supply Chain Planning development is moving forwards. The time is now to direct these strategies to assure a forthcoming-competitive advantage.
SC leaders must draw attention to the benefits of investing in the right digital technology, since they are a vital factor to thrive companies further, no matter what the future could bring.
Will you be part of the future reshaping of your organisation’s Supply Chain Planning?
Dave Food