Managing the supply chain effectively means making the right decisions every day confidently. Unfortunately, even today there is little trust in the data that is managed: in fact, over 70% of planners believe that they base their decision-making processes on outdated or inaccurate data. So how do you make sure you have the necessary and correct information to be able to make the best decisions for your company’s supply chain?
Even today, in many companies, planning leaves too much room for uncertainty. Isolated data and processes that must be executed in a precise order do not offer the necessary visibility. Complex and isolated systems hinder the desired flexibility for this function. The result is a decision-making process that makes the planner work and struggle, who then finds himself making decisions of which he is not sure and on whose impacts he has no visibility .
This is of fundamental importance, as not being able to make the right decisions at the right time can have significant impacts on economic results. The longer it takes the planner to respond, the greater the risk to costs, revenue, and customer satisfaction.
The time has come to update the planning experience and finally gain the awareness of knowing that you are making the best decisions, based on accurate and timely data.
Three Essentials for Making Reliable Decisions
There are three fundamental elements to make reliable decisions about your supply chain, positively influencing production processes and guaranteeing maximum performance:
- Visibility: if you want to make decisions quickly, safely and effectively, you need to have visibility over the entire supply chain. This means being able to quickly obtain in-depth information on the most critical areas and understand at a glance the scenarios and KPIs (performance indicators). It’s not enough just to be able to see thatinformation, you have to be able to explore the data and delve into the details. Enabling people responsible for management to collaborate and contribute quickly.
- Flexibility: having the right information requires the flexibility to process and aggregate it, transforming it into useful data for the individual reality. This means having the ability to create custom tables, reports, and dashboards that enable quick and intuitive reading of data, so you can uncover issues and opportunities. The ideal is represented by the drag-and-drop features of the selection that allows you to reduce the time needed for configuration and increase the time available for analysis.
- Versatility: when changes occur (and you can be sure they will), you need to be able to react quickly, which is essential for making decisions and responding to events. This means having the possibility to create and simulate different hypothetical scenarios, see the historical context of what has been done in the past in similar situations and overcome any situation of change, also thanks to automatic and instant alerts.
Systems for making reliable supply chain decisions
To make reliable decisions it is therefore necessary to have visibility into the data, flexibility in reworking it and versatility to react quickly to continuous changes. It becomes necessary to have systems that guarantee these capabilities. The most suitable systems for this purpose are the Advanced Planning & Scheduling systems (APS), advanced systems for the planning and scheduling of production processes. Directly integrated and complementary to the management system, these planning software allow you to improve control skills and make reliable decisions.
Seek expert advice
We are available to answer the questions of the most ambitious supply chain employees who want to improve the company’s production planning and scheduling processes. To contact an expert click here.
