Gartner’s 2024 study of supply chain technology trends notes that businesses are most interested in hyper-automating their supply chains with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation.
These new technologies seem like promising ways to increase your productivity, but to get the most out of them, you need to know exactly what’s happening throughout your supply chain.
Supply chain visibility platforms show you just that.
What Are Supply Chain Visibility Platforms?
Supply chain visibility platforms give you real-time insight into your products as they go from raw materials to manufacturing to end-user delivery. More simply, they let you know where your trucks, trailers, ships, and containers are at any point.
Because of the transparency that supply chain visibility software offers, many companies use it to manage their distribution services and inventory levels. Typically, supply chain visibility platforms also integrate with other types of supply chain management software to help with demand planning, customer relations, and transport management.
Benefits of Integrating Visibility Solutions for the Supply Chain
On the surface, real-time visibility may feel like it gives you a lot of data without a clear picture of how to use it. Here are some ways visibility solutions can help you out.
Improve Supply Chain Planning
Not many companies manage their entire supply chain, all the way from raw materials to finished products. As a result, with a clear real-time map of the entire lifecycle, you can get an edge on your competition by planning for potential changes in volume or production.
Monitor and Benchmark Tactical Execution
The real-time data you collect from these platforms helps you measure the performance of your supply chain strategy. With access to more data than ever, you can devise new ways to quantify your performance and have more productive conversations with providers.
Collaborate With Suppliers for Mutual Value
Your data can help answer key questions you might have, like how many different suppliers you should use. You can also identify preferred suppliers to work with more often, which can streamline your processes.
Optimize Supply Lanes
Logistics professionals can use supply chain visibility platforms to proactively examine their network design and find optimal patterns for their inventory management. They can look at data with high granularity, so they can plan different routes based on factors like day-of-the-week service.
Increase Customer Satisfaction
With advanced analytics, you can proactively communicate with customers or even address potential issues with their delivery before they become a major problem. If a problem isn’t solvable, you can give them clearer insight into the delay and the steps you’re taking to mitigate it.
Increase Your Team’s Productivity
Traditionally, employees needed to manually track and trace shipments. This type of menial work takes up a lot of their time. When customers get angry at them about a missing delivery, their job satisfaction drops. Using a visibility platform to track shipments and minimize delays takes a boring task off employees’ hands and keeps them happier and more productive overall.
Lower Demurrage and Detention
Because freight forwarders and carriers involve a number of disparate systems, it’s common to receive late or inaccurate updates about milestones or ETAs. As a result, you can quickly accrue delays, which lead to demurrage and detention fees. Real-time data can help you find and address the underlying logistical issues causing these delays.
Optimize Reverse Logistics
Companies tend to lose track of their inventory during returns because they don’t have a well-established reverse logistics process. As a result, you may wait for weeks to get a part from a vendor even though the same part is lost somewhere within your network. With more visibility, you can keep track of every piece that has been returned and reroute it to the appropriate location if necessary.
Strengthen Your Sustainability Strategy
A lot of a business’s emissions come from the supply chain, which can be frustrating because you typically have little direct control over them. With greater visibility, however, you can find inefficiencies and make changes to your supply chain planning in order to meet your sustainability targets.
How to Choose the Right Supply Chain Visibility Tool
If you’re researching supply chain visibility tools, you may notice that there are numerous options with varying features. It’s hard to tell which are useful and which are just for show.
Let us help you focus on the right ones.
Key Features for Supply Chain Visibility Solutions
Below are the key functions we would recommend looking for in a supply chain visibility solution.
Mapping the Supply Chain, Both Upstream and Downstream
The most fundamental feature of any visibility platform is the ability to completely map your supply chain so you can see your network in real time. It’s good for the platform to integrate your facility’s operations with technology like radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
Accurately Tracking Product Locations
Localization solutions offer precise location information so you can track paths of movement both indoors and outdoors.
Managing Packaging Specifications
Efficient packaging is the first step toward quickly moving your assets in and out of your facility. For your team to quickly receive, process, and store materials, your suppliers need to match your production process’s needs. Some visibility platforms can determine these needs, lock in specifications, and push them to suppliers so they can create the right packaging.
Providing Visibility Into Transportation and Distribution
Your transportation and distribution processes include a variety of items, including:
- Shipping containers
- Racks
- Pallets
- Machines that move items around
- Warehouse dock doors
Good route planning and usage of these items can help you optimize the picking process for new orders. As a result, orders can get out the door quicker.
Monitoring and Tracking Production Lines
Consistent production control solutions are critical to suppliers, whose clients demand assurances that they’re getting verified, high-quality goods every time. With insight into the complete production process, you can be certain about everything that went into it.
You can also track step-by-step quality assurance checks and make sure skilled labor was used all along the chain. If there are exceptions, you can rectify them in real time, maximizing all shifts throughout the day and validating the end product with certainty.
Discover the Best Solution to Improve Your Supply Chain Operations
A good supply chain visibility platform will help you optimize your inefficiencies and avoid catastrophes, all while giving you insight that can help you find new options to expand and enhance your supply chain.
Get in touch with Surgere to learn how our platform can give you powerful insights into your supply chain so your operations can flourish.
