The benefits of real-time visibility for your supply chain are undeniable—https://moduslink.com/supply-chain-visibility-real-time/ And for good reason: full, real-time visibility gives your organization the following advantages: —Increased agility —Better inventory tracking —Efficiency —Precise shipping estimates Let's look at supply chain visibility in detail. See below the infographic for a detailed explanation of real-time visibility in supply chain. https://moduslink.com/supply-chain-visibility-real-time/ That's a lot of information! Let's break it down. What should real-time visibility mean for your organization’s supply chain? ————— Increased agility ————— With real-time supply chain visibility, brands can be alerted to delays, slowdowns or changing trends – and make the necessary changes before it’s too late and their bottom line is affected. Conversely, if a product is doing particularly well, additional build orders and shipments can be expedited to take full advantage of a product’s popularity. ————— Better inventory tracking ————— By tracking inbound and outbound inventory, supply chain managers can follow where and when inventory will arrive and better prepare for potential delays. Having a close connection to inventory and real-time visibility assures brands are never caught low on stock and unable to fulfill orders (or worse, need to list an item as back-ordered). ————— Efficiency ————— With real-time data capture, interpretation and even prediction, brands can identify, prevent and fix any inefficient processes as they’re happening, rather than months after the fact. ————— Precise shipping estimates ————— Being able to track a product, no matter its location, offers great insight into estimated delivery dates. It also allows for seamless rerouting or expediting to avoid potential weather or natural disasters – ensuring on-time delivery. Today’s consumers expect faster shipping times and better communication, making this capability critical. ————— Is real-time visibility needed for everything? ————— Most companies have a long journey ahead of them to achieve full real-time visibility. Before you jump into an expensive upgrade of processes and infrastructure to enable that capability, you need to develop a well-thought out plan, keeping in mind a few caveats. With all the positive press about real-time visibility for your supply chain, it’s important to consider that providing constant updates across the entire supply chain may not be necessary. Enabling real-time updates for millions of data points requires significant cost in terms of systems, software and tracking, and not every item requires this type of constant monitoring or immediate action. Every business is different and has different needs. These differences depend on many things including your industry type, where you operate and how you do business. For example, what time zone do you operate in, and what role do time zones play in when you need data? You should consider what data you need on a continual basis. Keep in mind who needs to see certain types of data, and what are their needs relative to the freshness of it. For example, maybe you don’t need to update your calculated stock levels every five minutes, but you may indeed require continual updates of your inventory levels. It’s important to understand what real-time should mean for the metric you need to watch. And regardless of the update intervals, you should sync timing updates across the supply chain to ensure data accuracy. If one branch is updating its inventory levels in real-time, but the other does so every 24 hours, the collective view of inventory will be inaccurate. ————— One size doesn’t always fit all – even with real-time visibility ————— As you move forward toward in your goal to improve visibility in your supply chain, real-time updating is important. But before you jump into an expensive and time-consuming revamp of your entire supply chain, take some time to plan. Define what real-time means for your organization and your customers’ expectations. It’s time to change the concept of real-time to better meet the needs of each business. Your supply chain provider can work with you to understand what you need and provide you with the information from their IT infrastructure in a time, form and way that makes the most sense for you. ————— What's YOUR ideal real-time visibility? ————— Download our FREE ebook to learn how ModusLink can help you determine your ideal real-time visibility throughout your supply chain. Fix YOUR supply chain with real-time https://moduslink.com/supply-chain-visibility-real-time/

• published: 21 Jan 2019
• views: 659