Don’t be vulnerable: Peer-to-peer supply chains need community solutions
Malcolm Wheatley, senior contributing editor (malcolm_wheatley@compuserve.com) -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/13/2009 1:16:00 PM
|
At the New York-based U.S. headquarters of global Japanese giant Mitsui, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based supply chain application from Amitive ties together the supply chains of eight business units, delivering multi-enterprise collaborative planning together with real-time order, forecast, and inventory visibility.
“We’re actually an SAP shop,” says Marc Bialt, Mitsui’s manager of logistics and supply chain IT solutions. “But we use Amitive’s Unity application to complement SAP, achieving levels of flexibility and ease-of-use beyond what SAP could provide—all while maintaining our desired levels of compliance and control.”
|
| “We use Amitive’s Unity application to complement SAP, achieving levels of flexibility and ease-of-use beyond what SAP could provide.”— Marc Bialt, manager of logistics and supply chain IT solutions, Mitsui |
Amitive’s selling point, explains Sean Rollings, the company’s VP of marketing, is it’s designed from the ground up to facilitate the workings of an increasingly common kind of supply chain: that is, the collaborative network of contract manufacturers and logistics providers that develops when companies move away from in-house manufacturing.
“As companies start to rely on this Web of suppliers, they find they have less control over it,” Rollings explains. “The master-slave relationship has been replaced with a peer-to-peer supply chain community—and there aren’t the tools to manage it.”
That inability to manage is what leaves manufacturers dangerously vulnerable.
“Since this new model favors extended, multinational supply chains—and ties up increased amounts of inventory in finished goods—companies become even more vulnerable to the tight credit constraints and cost uncertainties that characterize today’s volatile markets,” notes Rollings.
In essence, Amitive sidesteps these dangers by acting as a central hub, linking the community together. But it’s a description that Mitsui’s Bialt is quick to qualify.
“It’s more than just a hub,” he stresses. “It’s also more than just a communication system. It’s a truly collaborative supply chain management system. With it, you’re moving right away from the traditional e-mailed spreadsheet, and tying-in forecasts, orders, and inventory-on-hand with replenishment orders—in real time.”
To the clerk-level employee using Amitive, he says, the application looks like a transaction-level system. But to the supply chain manager, it’s something much more significant, he emphasizes: “They’re looking at their supply chain—in depth, and in real-time.”
As an example of what the Amitive application allows Mitsui to do that it struggled to do before, Bialt postulates a hypothetical order for a product to be met with inventory from a warehouse at which insufficient stock exists—even though, in aggregate, inventory levels across the business are more than adequate.
“Traditionally, you might not see the shortfall until it was too late to transfer inventory from another location,” he explains. “But we see it at the moment the order arrives, or even when the forecast arrives. So there’s plenty of warning that we need to expedite deliveries to the warehouse, or transfer inventory from another location.”
Best of all, he notes, the interface with SAP means the decisions can be made off-line, without affecting the transaction system of record, and firmed-up within SAP when the best course of action has been identified—with transactions made within Amitive automatically updating SAP.
“We have total visibility across the supply chain,” concludes Bialt. “We can see changes in demand, and react to them. We’re not getting caught with surplus inventory in the warehouse.”
And given today’s business conditions, Bialt adds, that makes a good ROI even better.
-
The whole thing sounds interesting.
But the example and the phrase "cant show traditionally" seems more to refer to a not well configured SAP system.
SAP and i assume all other ERP solutions are capable to do this (show availability of inventory for replenishment requirements) if it configured properly. That is a very basic function.
Thomas Walter - 4/16/2009 1:19:00 AM MDT
