Global supply chain alert: IBM opens Innovation Center in China
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/14/2008 9:43:00 AM
IBM recently opened what it is calling the first supply chain innovation center dedicated to helping companies worldwide integrate and transform their global supply chain capabilities.
The Beijing Supply Chain Innovation Center will collaborate with companies to develop new solutions while showcasing and leveraging existing industry solutions to help companies expand and grow their integrated supply chain capabilities.
“Helping companies transform and extend their supply chains in a globally integrated economy requires new thinking, new methods, and new tools,” says Sanjeev Nagrath, a supply chain management leader for IBM Global Business Services. “China, which is one of the fastest-growing economies and a key link in global supply chains, is an ideal place to locate our new innovation center to create solutions for companies in not only emerging markets, but anywhere in the world.”
IBM cites these solutions among those that will be showcased in the Beijing center:
• Virtual Command Center: This service-oriented architecture-based supply chain visibility solution integrates and synchronizes supply, demand, and logistics information, enabling companies to gain visibility into the status and performance of the supply chain to facilitate effective decision-making in a sense-and-respond environment.
• Supply Chain Optimization tools and modelers: These components enable companies to design and operate agile and adaptable supply chain processes and networks.
• Carbon Tradeoff Modeler: This tool allows companies to include carbon output—i.e., footprinting—as a key variable when optimizing the supply chain, allowing them to understand the outcome of critical tradeoffs.
