Jace Davis

Supply chain disruptions have serious consequences. However, many companies continue to rely on manually-intensive processes to collect supply chain data from disparate systems and multiple trading partners, compiling it into spreadsheets.  Even in the best case scenario, today’s complex supply chains create too much data for manual processes to absorb. This causes a lack of real-time visibility into supply chain events as well as an inability to detect and resolve exceptions in a timely manner.

In this new era, manufacturers need to conduct smarter commerce by adapting sourcing and procurement of goods and services based on customer demand and reduce supply chain risks.  Virtually the only way to move perfect orders through complex and inherently imperfect supply chains is by gaining control over supply chain events as they happen. To do this, companies need to gain an end-to-end view of the order lifecycle across the supply chain and the ability to quickly identify and resolve problems in real-time.

“The better data you have, the better decisions you can make.  Having end to end visibility allows us to pick and choose the high priority alerts and then drill down into the cause of the alert,” says Greg Linder, Director of Supply Chain Operations at True Value.  With the help of a service-based visibility solution, the retailer was able to increase perfect order performance, realizing a 57% reduction in lead times, a 10% increase in fill rates, and an 85% reduction in back orders.

Results like these are not uncommon when companies gain real-time visibility to supply chain events, together with a system of role-based alerts. Consider: How many more perfect orders could you deliver if there were no blind spots in your supply chain? How much could you save if your procurement, supply chain, transportation, warehouse, and finance managers didn’t have to chase down order status but could depend on a system that would notify them only when problems occurred that required their attention?  Take a closer look at these possibilities in this white paper, Why Supply Chain Visibility is Critical to Achieve the Perfect Order, that looks at how supply chain visibility works, what it takes to put it in place, and its ultimate impact on perfect order performance.

A few years ago, a Canadian pharmaceutical company found that it was in constant crisis mode, and its way out of the chaos lay in getting everyone to communicate.

The company, Ratiopharm Canada, was having a hard time being flexible enough to meet changes in demand. For example, the supply chain unit might not know for as long as four months that there had been a slowdown in production because of a manufacturing snafu or a quality control issue.

Ratiopharm found the answer was to get everyone to communicate. The generic drug manufacturer made that happen by using social collaboration tools.

“When the entire operation is stressed, it reverts to crisis mode,” said Antonio Martins, who was vice president of supply chain in 2005 when he first introduced social collaboration tools at Ratiopharm. “We were in constant crisis mode. When the stress is lifted, suddenly things can be more orderly…. The entire operation becomes much more efficient.”

Martins, who today is vice president of supply chain at Teva Canada, which bought Ratiopharm in 2010, said the problem stemmed from a lack of communication in the supply chain. If something went wrong anywhere in the supply chain process, it might be two to four months before the people who needed to know found out about it.

So how do you bridge such a chasm of communication? Martins turned to Web 2.0 technology and social collaboration tools, starting with Microsoft’s SharePoint, then switching to tools from Strategy-Nets and later Moxie Software, which is what the company uses today.