Supply Chain Innovation
From WikiSCM
It used to be that the mandate for innovation was confined to the product development organization inside companies. But no longer. Today, advances in technologies and consumer desires have driven demand for highly differentiated products to be developed and delivered faster and more reliably than ever. Supply chain professionals are called upon to create networks and chains that can accommodate new risks, faster product introduction cycles and greater synchronization among internal functions and external partners—all engendered by two of the biggest trends of our times, globalization and mass customization
Is your supply chain up to the challenge? The new competitiveness among leading companies will revolve around supply chain excellence: the right products delivered to the right customers at the right time. And that excellence is increasingly being defined by agility.
The key word here is changing. For the first time, today’s information technology advances give companies the opportunity to plan, make, source and deliver at the speed of business—to capture, analyze and change business processes and workflows to meet market demand on a real-time basis. The new capabilities enable continuous and faster cycles of learning across all of the organizations in the supply chain. But the new-generation systems offer new possibilities for growth as well. Here are some of the capabilities they offer:
• Using point-of-sale data to drive your extended supply chain
• Continually monitoring planned versus actual supply chain performance
• Continually shaping demand by dynamically adjusting price configurations
• Providing global inventory visibility
• Leveraging execution data in a real-time planning environment
• Utilizing transportation and logistics more broadly in supply chain planning
• Redesigning supply chain processes while leveraging existing systems
No longer is the role of supply chain management limited to managing costs and creating greater efficiency in production processes. The new mandate is to help companies react to demand without increasing capacity or inventory.
We used to say that information would replace inventory, and at the time—10 or so years ago—it seemed like a pipe dream. But now industry leaders are showing it can be done, by becoming early adopters of some of the advanced capabilities enabled by business process platforms and service-oriented architectures, two of the recent innovations in supply chain management software.
One of the most exciting aspects of these new systems is that they don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. They can embrace legacy systems, whether of the ERP (enterprise resource planning) or APS (advanced planning systems) variety. They can integrate with other software applications, whether customized or standard, from other software developers. They can be manipulated by your own IT and business managers to create the work-flows and business processes—even the user interfaces— that suit your company and your industry.
As advanced as they are, these new systems simply provide a starter kit. Each company must expand upon these systems by establishing the practices and culture that enable innovation in supply chain management.
