Supply Chain Management Software for End-to-End Visibility
Bottom Line: Supply Chain Management Software provides manufacturers accurate and real-time end-to-end visibility of the potential impact of supply chain disruptions on their operations, costs, and revenue.
Limiting the impact of supply chain disruptions on production needs to start by improving end-to-end visibility. Knowing what’s happening in real-time with suppliers and how that affects inventory levels, and costs are proving effective in absorbing unpredictable disruptions.
The more real-time the inventory and cost data is across suppliers, the faster it is to spot ripple effects and respond to them before they get out of hand. Track-and-traceability combined with analytics and supplier quality management prove to be invaluable features of supply chain software that allow manufacturers to spot the start of any ripple effects early and get in control of them.
How Supply Chain Management Software Helps to Absorb Supply Chain Shocks
Today’s chaotic, disruptive nature of supply chains makes it difficult for many manufacturing companies to meet committed-to-customer delivery dates. Relying on customers’ goodwill and moving delivery dates out a few times on every order only goes so far. As a result, more manufacturers are doubling down on supply chain software that delivers end-to-end visibility comprised of real-time inventory, cost, supplier quality data, and more. Left uncontrolled, supply chain disruptions and their ripple effects can quickly take control of manufacturing plants and shop floors. No one can afford to let that happen, so end-to-end visibility is a high priority across manufacturing globally.
Food & beverage, medical device, and medical packaging businesses build their supply chain and production operations on data delivered using track-and-traceability. It has proved invaluable to those and other manufacturing industries by providing real-time inventory, cost, and delivery data to keep production on schedule, stay in compliance, reduce recalls, and more.
As the cornerstone of achieving end-to-end visibility, supply chain software’s core features of track-and-traceability, analytics, and supplier quality management deliver the following benefits:
- Not knowing supplier inventory costs, levels, and schedules burn cash fast. Inventories are the most expensive current asset manufacturers have, and not having end-to-end supply chain visibility to know how they’re at risk from supply chain shortages can lead to costly errors.
- Improve inventory forecasts and stabilize production planning, including daily build rates. Knowing inventory levels for each supplier, how stable they are, and if they are going on allocation anytime soon is invaluable because these factors directly impact production planning. In addition, the more end-to-end visibility any manufacturer has across every layer of their supply chains, the more solid daily build rates are.
- Identify supply chain ripple effects early and take action to alleviate their negative impact. End-to-end supply chain data is the early warning system manufacturers need to spot supplier shortages, allocations, or large surplus inventories at their locations and across the channel. In addition, trace-and-traceability is an invaluable tool for getting on top of what is causing ripple effects through a supply chain. It can capture data used for trending analysis and planning.
- Tracking supplier quality levels before materials hit the production line. No one can afford to have a line down because a supplier’s material was defective. Having warning of quality levels of each supplier’s shipment before they reach the production line can save line shutdowns, rework costs, compliance fines, and more.
- Improves compliance reporting and streamlines regulatory audits. The more regulated a manufacturer is, the more they need end-to-end supply chain visibility to maintain regulatory compliance. Supply chain software can automate creating, maintaining, and distributing audit reports to regulatory agencies, streamlining the entire process. Considering the pervasive impact of the 21 CFR 11 regulation on all Food & Drug Administration (FDA) regulated industries, supply chain software’s potential to save time by improving end-to-end visibility makes it worth the investment. Medical device manufacturers who excel at FDA CFR Part 820 compliance are finding new ways to reduce costs, improve quality, and automate audits.
Conclusion
End-to-end visibility across supply chains is the shock absorber every manufacturer needs today to cope with the unpredictability that makes production planning challenging. Supply chain management software is the solution manufacturers are turning to for the insights they need to stay ahead of growing ripple effects across suppliers that often deliver greater risk to production schedules and customer delivery dates.
