Providing timely information to supply chain decision makers
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The latest edition of IDC’s Manufacturing Insights Theory & Practice newsletter (here) has a good article talking about the critical need to get timely information to supply chain decision makers. According to the article, “manufacturers that cannot effectively share data between functional groups and with outside partners will increasingly find themselves less flexible, less responsive to customer demand, and less productive than competitors with mature information sharing capabilities.”
I just talked about one aspect of this here. As companies increasingly outsource, they can’t outsource responsibility for the end result, and to be able to effectively coordinate response to unexpected events, requires they have visibility as a pre-requisite. This requires partnerships with suppliers to ensure that data is available. Too often we see information focused in silos - where the demand team focuses on demand related information and the supply team on supply related information. The speed and quantity of demand, supply and product change is requiring companies to move from sequential planning processes to more parallel, interactive response processes. This necessitates that all key decision-makers have a holistic and current view of demand and supply at once.
The ability to deliver greater responsiveness and flexibility is tied to your ability to empower people with not only visibility in a timely fashion, but ensuring that the visibility is holistic and that these decision makers have the tools to drive action in response to unexpected events.
