* Our Decision: Your Actions *
| Supply Chain Planning |
Centralized Orchestration of Flow of Goods, Money and Information
Supervisory and decision making in supply chain is extremely important. By definition the value chain has multiple process which are linked within the organization and with external partners like customer, vendors, 3PL service providers, distributors and channel partners.
Internally companies are organized as procurement, production, logistics and sales as these are specialized activities and makes them effective and efficient. Design, Maintenance and support function should also be considered as important aspect of supply chains in our opinion.
A Products journey to customer however will pass through several processes and there is a challenge which is difficult (not impossible!) to escape. These specialized process in value chain will have coordination issues unless somebody views this as one big process working for end customer. the supply chain and company as a whole can only be as effective as the weakest chain in the link.
Several Flavours of Supply Chain
Though demand, supply, production, inventory, transport, storage etc are common elements of supply chain, but there may be several variations due to following drivers-
- Goods related supply chain are common, but services supply chain can be equally or more challenging. Product in such cases may be incremental service based value addition in the value chain. Information and money flow are still important aspects in both kind if supply chains.
- The processes of procurement, production, logistics and sales can vary vastly from one industry vertical to another. E.g. Automotive, Pharma, Mining, Utilities, Oil and gas have very different process rules.
- Supply based or demand based markets may have different structures.
- NGO, governement services may have different structures and objecives of product and service delivery.
Supply Chain Planning Solutions
Supply chain planning can have different decision making objectives-
- Long term investment decision in network design and layout
- Medium term Plannig for Budgeting, Maintenance planning, Contract, Transport fleet chartering decisions.
- Integrated monthly sales and operations planning aligning procurement, production and delivery decisions
- Order, Resource or Capacity allocation in short term horizon
- Production planning- discrete, continuous, semi-continuous process
- Fulfillment and Route scheduling in short term horizon
Our COTS solution umbrella XPlan offers several modules (and integrated solution) for above requirements and beyond. We are open to proof and concepts and customizing solutions to meet your needs.