Sustainable Supply Network

I believe ‘supply chain’ is no longer an appropriate description because the combination of market demands and disruptions have fundamentally changed the supply requirements and now demands networked capabilities to meet the normal course of business. The pandemic has highlighted this new reality in a dramatic way through the waves of disruption that have been crashing on the supply chain. These disruptions have been systematically breaking the links in the supply chain and as a result demonstrated the importance of a ‘Supply Network’ in order to sustain the supply. It is too easy to call out the initial disruption of the pandemic as a black swan, a once in a lifetime, event and we would be foolish to think this will be resolved into a ‘new normal’. The new normal will more likely than not be made up of waves of disruption that demand a new sustainable supply network to provide the framework and foundation required to support the market going forward.

The disruptions we experience regularly and with increasing frequency have highlighted the need for a resilient and sustainable supply network that can flex and connect based on the current availability and capability in real time. This has quickly become a base requirement that a significant challenge to the technology and the culture of organizations and especially the marketplace. The disruption and the resulting changed demands on the supply network require agility and resilience to respond along with the tools and methods to swiftly sense the disruption and then just as swiftly determine the appropriate reaction, or series of potential reactions, to the disruption so the network can swiftly and efficiently execute the most appropriate reaction(s). There is no longer an option to perform deep analysis and study the disruption, the market now demands immediate reaction in order to implement a repair to the network from the disruption.

This is where it gets difficult, how does your network first sense the issue and then quickly and efficiently react? The simple answer is that without a real time networked solution that incorporates artificial intelligence tools to sense the issue and then machine learning to analyze the options there is really no way for a human to react is the necessary timeframe. The key to success in this global market is a resilient and sustainable supply network that can work collaboratively across nodes and partner to react and repair the issues. The challenge is overcoming the limitations of the legacy batch processes and practices.

This is something that requires a concerted and coordinated action plan across the global supply network in order to support the market demands. The answer is definitely not bringing manufacturing back to the local market because the global supply cannot support the demand effectively or efficiently. Unfortunately, there are really no ‘easy’ answers to the challenge and on top of this, the response requires a continuous analysis is real time in order to sense and respond in a manner that addresses the issue or the disruption. Disruption in the global market is never the same reason and always requires a combination of multiple responses from multiple supply partners. This is difficult and requires a network response in real time to support the market.

Our goal should not and cannot be to build a new normal, our goal instead must be building a resilient and sustainable network of partners that collaborates to support the changing demands. This is a difficult goal that will not get easier with time. Our current supply chain tools are not architected to support a network and this must be the first step in the journey. This will be a complicated challenge that requires a significant level of collaboration to achieve. Delay will only make the transition more difficult though.

Conversational Commerce

Conversational Commerce

The retail omni market, along with the entire retail supply chain collaborative network, is being driven by consumer demand towards a significant disruption that will transform the legacy consumer focus into a social commerce, or conversational commerce, marketplace. I think the conversational commerce name is highly descriptive of the transformation and provides a highly descriptive name to the next transformation wave. The next transformation wave will be focused on the two-way interaction between customer and retailer or customer and service provided or retailer and service provider, I’m sure you get the drift, creating an eComerce network market. The next transformation will eliminate the hierarchy across the retail marketplace and replace the hierarchy with a network of direct connections to the appropriate partner at the appropriate time in the retail transaction. The benefits of this model are dramatic for all parties involved and provide the framework for interaction through the next transformation wave.

Conversational commerce is the next logical step in the transformation of the social commerce marketplace network and provides a great way to frame the transformation. The focus of conversational commerce is a network of two-way interaction between consumers and partners to support shopping and purchasing in the omni market. This is a further clarification and more importantly an enhancement to shopping and purchasing in the marketplace. This creates a virtual shopping capability that incorporates virtually the interaction that normally occurs in the physical retail shopping trip. It provides the ability to interact across all of the parties involved in the shopping experience to provide the value-added services and products during the shopping experience that would be difficult in the current standard eCommerce or omni market shopping experience. The two-way interaction is a very powerful tool that will improve the shopping experience and increase the opportunities for additional sales and add-on services.

The transformation definitely requires a means to coordinate and direct the communications across the involved parties and this is where the control tower concept and technology comes into play. A control tower framework is required to provide a plug-and-play framework for communication and collaboration with external partners and even consumers that allows the partners to focus on the business benefits rather than the communication requirements. The control tower framework must be embraced and implemented across all of the partners to maintain the communication and realize the benefits. This framework provides the basis for integration from a message perspective to allow the partner to communicate with a partner in the most efficient manner for the partner while maintaining a clean and stable interface with their own internal systems. The framework provides an externally facing tool that is flexible and robust to simplify the addition and integration with other partners, it does not eliminate the work to external partners, it eliminates the work on the internal integration though to the business applications.

Conversational commerce focuses on the two-way communication between partners, including manufacturers, transport, service providers and consumers. This model will transform the omni channel retail marketplace again based on the consumer lifestyles and the consumer embrace of technology to support the social network. Conversational commerce is another term for what I have been calling social commerce which is the two-way direct communications with all players or partners involved in the retail marketplace. Consumers view retail shopping as a social experience which is why malls were so successful and now the consumers are using conversational commerce to create a virtual mall.

Solution Is A Stop In The Strategic Journey

A solution is merely an interim stop or milestone in the journey that is your business strategy. Your strategy is your map that guides your way and methods of taking your journey, just like setting up a destination Google Maps with interim stops along the way. Your strategy must be capable of sensing changes and disruption early to be able to respond and most importantly to evaluate your interim deliverables, or solutions, required to meet your long term strategy. Perhaps most importantly, these adjustments in response to disruption allow you to evaluate your strategy to improve, update, improve and focus over time. The ability of your business and market strategy to sense and respond to disruption must also improve over time in order to survive. This, in essence, is a basic tenant of the continuous improvement process and this continuous process makes up the foundational framework to sense and respond to business, market and environmental disruption.

Supply chain network digitization has become a key factor in supply chain resilience with the need driven in large part by VUCA resulting in waves of disruption across markets. The number of companies seeking approaches to measure and benchmark their digital infrastructure and processes is growing as a result. In order to achieve the improvements necessary to support the demand it is important to incorporate tools that can assess, and perhaps most importantly, monitor the benefits and challenges resulting from the digitization process itself.

This is where real time federated networks and control tower capabilities come into play to provide the capabilities necessary to sense the disruption in time to respond to the issue and even recover in time to limit or even eliminate disruptive results. What we are seeing now is the impact from disruption causing additional waves of disruption that in turn impact the supply chain and dependent businesses. This does not need to be the case and should be a critical focus and objective to the supply chain strategy.

We are seeing now a realization of the continuous impact to the market as a result of the state of extreme VUCA we are experiencing. This is difficult to react and address because, frankly, if feels as if the market is in an almost continuous state of disruption. This requires a collaborative technology that brings together the extended partners across the supply chain on a foundation of a federated network that provides the means to collect and analyze the data generated across the supply chain in forecasting the disruption and then providing suggestions for reactions to the disruption. This is complicated by the volume of data available and necessary to analyze and forecast results and the speed of data generation from each of these data points

Control tower technology combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence combine to help to address the challenge. The technology is in a state now that can quickly and efficiently sense and respond to disruption by utilizing the large volumes of digital data through machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to analyze and identify the disruption along with potential reactions and responses to the disruption. We have entered into a time now where large volumes of data that is collected and available for analysis can actually be processed in a manner and timeframe that allows the supply chain to respond. This is the power of control towers and this next logical step in the strategic journey to the benefits that can be achieved through a robust digitalization strategy.


Tom Brouillette

Contact: tom.brouillette@gmail.com



Thank you for reading my post on Linkedin in addition, Here at my blog I regularly write about management and -technology trends. To read my future posts on LinkedIn click 'Follow'
Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies

Supply Chain Network Resilience

 

Supply Chain Network Resilience

 

Supply chain network digitization has become a  key factor in supply chain resilience with the need driven in large part by VUCA resulting in waves of disruption across markets.   The number of companies seeking approaches to measure and benchmark their digital infrastructure and processes is growing as a result. In order to achieve the improvements necessary to support the demand it is important to incorporate tools that can assess, and perhaps most importantly, monitor the benefits and challenges resulting from the digitization process itself.  This is another variation on a continuous improvement program and requires the same methods and practices to achieve the digitization objectives and benefits.  It is important to review and validate modifications because of the relationships between multiple digitization initiatives and their combined benefits and challenges.  

Kearney’s Resilience Stress Test “Strategic Options To Build Resilience”, assesses supply chain resilience outside of the common disaster scenario capability and capacity planning to be able to rapidly flex, or repurpose, assets, across your extended supply chain network to be able to respond to unanticipated supply shocks, such as trade wars, major weather events, or permanent shifts in demand.  The dimensions of this stress test framework include: geography; planning; suppliers; inbound transportation; manufacturing; outbound distribution; product portfolio and platform; and financial/working capital.

In order to be successful the framework monitoring must be spread widely across all supply network points, and processes, as well as those of suppliers and partners, initially starting with critical processes and partners, with a focus on measuring the degree of digitalization and capabilities in each of these factors. These digitization capabilities and processes include using IoT sensors in logistics or fulfilment operations, robotic process automation in production or distribution, and analytics and machine learning in production centers, inventory management, and financial capital management.  As a starting point, the initial evaluation provides the baseline that should be used to monitor and measure progress and must be developed to support monitoring across your extended supply network.

This is where automated control tower software can and should be utilized to support a process that will continuously monitor the network.  Ideally, this control tower solution would be capable of alerts and even prescribe how to resolve issues as well as actually resolving issues automatically as they occur.  The challenge in the extended supply chain network is caused by the velocity of disruption experienced across your network.  These disruptions can occur with such speed and spread across your network partners that it becomes impossible to perform the necessary analysis and adjustments to react and address the disruption in a timely manner.  It is not enough to identify after the fact because of the potential damage to your business.  The velocity of the disruption and the potential impact requires immediate response and this can be achieved by a robust software solution that spans the supply chain network.

Tom Brouillette

Contact: tom.brouillette@gmail.com

Thank you for reading my post on Linkedin in addition,  Here at my blog I regularly write about management and -technology trends.  To read my future posts on LinkedIn click 'Follow'

Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.

Supply Chain Elasticity

There is more and more bluster focused on the dangers of the global supply chain and the only solution is to move manufacturing back to the US. This sounds great in sound bites as an option but is really not feasible and would never move forward to be executed. There are a few significant challenges to moving manufacturing back to the US starting with the fact that no one will pay the increased cost required of products manufactured in the US. The US has been addicted to the cost savings delivered by global manufacturing and it will be next to impossible to wean off that drug. There are a number of additional challenges including; materials supply chain and people and manufacturing plant capacity that have both been redesigned based on global manufacturing capacity and cost savings.

This leaves us in a state of risk for high impact disruption from global events such as pandemic that impacts entire regions and reverberates around the world. The issue is not a global supply chain, the issue is deficient risk identification and mitigation to react and address disruptions as they surface and not after the marketplace has been disrupted. The goal is to limit the disruption to limit the impact. This requires a focus on VUCA analysis and reaction to respond and address the disruption.The solution involves a global supply chain that incorporates key process and partner backup and alternative options for the supply chain including, raw materials, plants and even transport options to reduce the risk of disruption.


This is not a simple solution though because of the diverse and continuously changing supply chain! This requires a coordinated collaborative effort that combines people, process and most of all technology in ways that support the sense and response capabilities of partners and processes across the global supply chain. Luckily, we are entering a time where advances in technology, and especially collaborative technology, can be incorporated to support the velocity of change. The waves of disruption unleashed by the pandemic have started an era of extreme VUCA requiring enhanced technology capabilities to respond with the same velocity.


This is where control tower technologies come into the picture as a means to support a coordinated collaborative response to the waves of disruption. Control tower capabilities and opportunities have come into their own, and really stepped up during the pandemic to quickly show value. With AI, machine learning and process automation added to the control tower tool box you can quickly come to the point where you can quickly meet the velocity of disruption to react to changing demands and continuous waves of disruption. You must come to accept the fact that you will never eliminate disruption, the point is to build the capabilities to sense and respond before the disruption gets out of hand.


Tom Brouillette

Contact: tom.brouillette@gmail.com



Thank you for reading my post on Linkedin in addition, Here at my blog I regularly write about management and -technology trends. To read my future posts on LinkedIn click 'Follow'


Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.