The application of a digital supply chain control tower remains a misunderstood aspect of modern supply chain management. Today’s organizations have a continuously-expanding need for more visibility and traceability within the supply chain. Meanwhile, collaborative logistics is the new focus of the industry, generating significant interest in unified supply chain systems and lower risks. Supply chain leaders need to understand the basic premise of a digital supply chain control tower, how it enables end-to-end visibility, and tips to apply a digital supply chain control tower for maximizing its value through proactive implementation and management.
What Is a Digital Supply Chain Control Tower
A supply chain control tower is a carefully designed system that makes the various aspects and steps of the chain clearer and easier to follow. The outside supply chain environment often is not as visible as managers would like. And the goal of a carefully designed control tower is to deliver end-to-end visibility.
Traditional setup for a supply chain control tower provides visibility to only a single person who is responsible for the next action items in the supply chain. In reality, the subsequent steps grow more difficult to manage and track, creating more risk within the supply chain. The advanced, digitally enhanced control tower is designed to make the chain easier to follow. Everything is more visible in the control tower. Users gain visibility into processes and real-time shipment location. Additionally, decisions on purchasing, ordering adjustments, and other exception management actions are executed based on real-time data and analytics that provide a clear view of the process to improve continuously.
Using a Digital Tower to Achieve End to End Visibility
End-to-end visibility is the ultimate goal for supply chain managers and partners, including suppliers, manufacturers, carriers, brokers, logistics service providers, retailers, and other supply chain stakeholders.
The demands of the clients change season by season, and this means that the control tower must be adaptable and digitally manageable. This exciting capability makes supply chain control towers a force to be reckoned with in the market today.
According to Supply Chain Game Changer, “by creating an ecosystem [that] focuses on transparency, companies can have visibility into the order to reduce the risk of potential issues as well as gain data on how to better manage orders. The [finest in digitally enhanced Control Towers] uses AI and serves as a system of engagement across trading partners, and orchestrates companies, people and things to work together in real-time to serve the end consumer.”
Robust, digital control towers are the start of it all.
Tips for Applying a Digital Control Tower
Supply chain visibility and control are progressively improving. It is becoming more critical than ever that supply chains find a way to establish and sustain a competitive advantage within their respective markets. However, modern complications, like variations to marketing methods, adjustments to how customers shop and the ever-changing transportation regulations make it even more important than ever for businesses to do everything they can to make their control towers efficient. Here are some ways to improve the chances of attaining end-to-end visibility within your control tower setup:
- Make efforts to improve overall performance through optimization in the supply chain.
- Create second-to-none customer service with great communication and transparency.
- Reduce issues common in supply chain networks by using dynamic control methods.
- Lower miscommunication issues with clear visibility and alerts for all involved members, including automated notifications of critical events that occur or any exceptions needing to be addressed.
- Gain better control over the flow of the chain with improved collaboration and support through auto-tagging functions and -populating capabilities, based on dynamic rule sets established on the admin side of the system. These automated features make it easier to create filters and quick views of items needing done or paid more attention to.
- Focus on end-to-end goals and keep all team members involved along the way by sharing and obtaining data in real-time.
- Ensure your platform and mechanics are updated and can support your control tower plan, continuously pulling new updates and functions down from the cloud.
Reap the Rewards of a Digital Supply Chain Control Tower With a Single Pane of Glass Platform
The digital supply chain control tower must reside within the cloud. It must make management automated where possible and streamline every function. For those reasons, more companies are turning to unified supply chain network capabilities, particularly through a single pane of glass strategy. Find out more about how your organization can take advantage of a digital supply chain control tower and single pane of glass to maximize the value of your tech stack and enable optimized orchestration by visiting Turvo online today.
