Challenging Geo-political environments, Brexit, the U.S.-China trade war, lately, the COVID-19 pandemic — have changed the priorities of many supply chain economies (Leaders), forcing them to strike a balance between cost and operational efficiency with greater resilience.
In a recent Gartner survey, only 21% of respondents stated that they have high resilient networks, being excellent visibility, and the agility to shift sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution activities at ease. For the majority of the respondents, this suggests that increasing resilience is a hard-line priority as they emerge from the current crisis. It is expected that 50% or more to be highly resilient within two to three years.
“Most supply chain leaders recognize that becoming more resilient is a necessity in the current environment,” says Geraint John, VP Analyst at Gartner. “However, measures such as alternative factories, dual sourcing, and more generous safety stocks go against the well-versed philosophy of lean supply chains that has prevailed in recent decades.”
The rebalancing of efficiency and resiliency will not be easy. Resiliency comes with additional costs. This cost increases volume variability – Like in the recent expose of supply chain struggle to meet the demand for ventilators. The supply chain ecosystem must be prepared to have business continuity plans in the wake of events like natural disasters and global pandemics.
Specific industries, such as microprocessor development or consumer technologies, advanced electronics manufacturers, to maneuver these choppy waters, have already produced comprehensive dashboards that layout the full status of production and shipment, down to the last detail. These dashboards refresh every 20 minutes to provide a real-time overview of the entire supply chain.
Such technology will inevitably emerge as the norm. Consider the pharmaceutical industry, for example, where there is currently no single database, either centralized or distributed, from which to map the critical components for drug manufacturing. For suppliers, and ultimately, end-users, the visibility on sourcing is critical and needs up-gradation. Leadership teams can stay a step ahead of supply chain disruptions by improving their ability to analyze internal data and external sources of big data rapidly. That means harnessing machine learning and artificial intelligence for predictive and prescriptive analytics. Those tools can deploy early-warning technologies, model risk scenarios, and develop pre-programmed responses. Increased risk of disruption also requires updated planning parameters and objectives, since old assumptions are no longer valid.
Techwave’s External Manufacturing Integration (EMI) Platform
Techwave’s External Manufacturing Integration (EMI) Platform is a Cloud Solution to achieve a Collaborative Intelligent Supply Chain Network which connects local, regional, and global operations for a real-time view across the supply chain. It transforms data from any connected supply chain partner’s edge devices, mobile, and IoT technologies into actionable insights for more effective decision-making, new levels of efficiencies, and higher levels of supply chain performance.
External Integration:
The integration platform that connects a company’s operations with its contract supply chain partners is built in such a way that it interacts with any supply chain solution or ERP. It can be deployed on-premise or in the Cloud while accepting a wide range of data inputs from external manufacturers through spreadsheets to real-time APIs.
Deploy it to Cloud:
Techwave EMI in the Cloud can be deployed in a fraction of the time because it’s pre-validated and baseline-configured with a library of integration options. It provides near-instantaneous back-up, recovery, and cloning of your Techwave environment regardless of size. With Techwave Analytics, AI, and Machine Learning, Stakeholders can perform deep dives into intra-day risk positions in real-time, that standard analytical computing cannot do.
Secure to the Core:
The EMI platform provides a Secure, Scalable, Sustainable AWS Cloud environment, which also facilitates the ability to extend third party integration to various parties who support the overall supply chain process. Thus, providing for more in-depth and richer data insights to customers for competitive advantage.
Robust:
The solution concept and framework design was a collaboration between SAP Industry Leadership and Techwave. It has an expanded functionality when compared with standard SAP Supply Chain Solution. The solution focuses on the future technical direction of SAP Using the S4 Hana foundation in addition to the lower cost of ownership in comparison to alternative SAP solutions.
Enrich Business Value:
Designed and build by Supply Chain Industry Member Participation and Supply Chain SME Expertise to create business value for Multi-tier Industry Supply Chain and CMO End User Process.
COVID-19 has revealed the weaknesses of a globalized manufacturing system, and to respond, we need to rethink supply chains fundamentally. Given the level of disruption to supply chains as a result of the pandemic, things may never be the same again. Do not construe the pandemic as the end of global supply chains.