products suply chain visibility

Supply Chain Visibility Enables Response Management

The need for supply chain visibility to enable Response Management has never been stronger. The trend towards offshoring and outsourcing has been accelerating for several years. Brand owners continue to outsource manufacturing to gain cost advantages, increase focus on core competencies and achieve global reach. But with the advantages that come from outsourcing come challenges. As a brand owner turns over the manufacturing of key components and products, they frequently lose visibility and control over key business processes at the same time and jeopardize operations performance

These challenges are complicated by the increasing velocity that manufacturers face today. Frequent demand changes combined with rapid product innovation and the increasing potential for supply disruptions across the extended supply chain create a critical need to respond to change.

In order to effectively respond to change, a supply chain manager needs to be empowered with tools for risk tradeoff and response to daily changes inside the sales and operations planning horizon. Effective response requires complete and timely supply chain visibility for all decision-makers.

RapidResponse™ Glass Pipeline technology provides a secure conduit to deliver supply chain visibility from across a distributed supply chain. It facilitates the integration of data from demand planning, supply chain planning and ERP systems, EDI, spreadsheets and other legacy systems. Through the Glass Pipeline, RapidResponse is automatically and continuously populated with up-to-the-second live enterprise data. When data comes from multiple sources within and beyond the enterprise the system automatically and transparently consolidates diverse information to deliver every user the same "single view of the truth. Users can define personal alerts with their own thresholds and conditions to drive exception-driven action to unexpected events.

Armed with visibility into true demand and an accurate statement of actual supply, supply chain managers can identify supply/demand misalignments and actively collaborate with colleagues to understand the impact of changes and to determine the appropriate actions to take in response. Supply chain visibility alone is not enough to drive rapid response to change. But when combined with tools for risk tradeoff and response, supply chain managers can actively leverage supply chain visibility to drive breakthroughs in operations performance.