Supply chains are one of the most critical business processes in the world today. They can sometimes even determine the success or failure of a business. That’s why companies must have a good grasp of their solutions.
According to the experts at Accenture, supply chain management should focus on building resilience to manage ongoing disruptions and further improve performance.
The pandemic caused several serious problems within supply chains worldwide, with a critical problem often being that organizations did not have a full view of it, leading to a breakdown in communication and negative consequences for staff and customers.
When companies are pressured to improve supply chain resilience, companies will tend to “implement redundancy measures” and “just in case”, making rushed and unnecessary decisions that are not cost-effective and furthering the workflow processes. Pressurize.
Accenture believes there is a much better way to create resiliency in the supply chain. They have conducted research that provides an in-depth understanding of why good supply chain visibility is critical to business success.
Intelligent visibility, which can be described as a combination of structural and dynamic visibility, has proven to be an extremely cost-effective way to build targeted supply chain resilience. Analytical techniques and artificial intelligence also support this.
Let’s look closely at what makes intelligent visibility. We see that structurally and dynamically, both have different motivations that give a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanics of the supply chain.
Structural visibility allows companies to get a snapshot of their operations at a particular time or over time, uncovering hidden issues. Dynamic visibility is reacting to events in real-time with the progression of increasingly mature capabilities.
Dynamic visibility can help determine things like:
Where products are located throughout the supply chain. How factories and warehouses run. When and where failures occur. Which disruptions are of influence, and how.
Structural visibility can help discover:
Where suppliers are. Where are the production points? Which logistics routes are used, including those of partners? Interrelations in the wider supply chain network Potential supply chain risks and weaknesses
It was found that the implementation of strategic processes varied, indicating different attitudes within industries that rely on supply chain operations. 90% of companies surveyed by Accenture regularly performed classic risk management initiatives, while 77% performed network simulation/optimization/modeling. 40% appeared to use the data prescriptively, and only 3% used autonomous execution.
Accenture experts found some crucial points for those looking to strengthen their resilience in the supply chain.
They say visibility delivers results regarding resilience, and companies with greater visibility are better positioned to handle disruptions. Full insight into the supply chain is also not always necessary or economically feasible. Businesses should focus on the most important areas they have. Using digital twins, companies should strive to get the foundations of structural visibility in order, while dynamic visibility should be an ultimate goal. Predictive visibility and autonomous execution, achieved with an advanced control tower, are crucial to maximizing resiliency.
Accenture MD Strategy & Consulting, Supply Chain & Operations Lead A/NZ Brian Sterner noted that structural and dynamic visibility could help create more transparent options as enterprises strive for resilience in the supply chain.
“To make the supply chain resilient, organizations must look ‘under the hood’ for the full picture. Applying structural and dynamic visibility can provide greater transparency by uncovering hidden issues, enabling real-time responses “, he says.
Overall, it’s clear that gaining a better understanding of the supply chain will help organizations avoid high costs, inefficiencies, and complexity and ultimately improve their bottom line.
Read the full report here to learn more about Accenture’s groundbreaking research.
