Using Technology for Better Supply Chain Planning

Failures. Bottlenecks. Damage. Natural disasters. Unexpected events happening around the globe. There are many unknowns and potential problems just waiting to happen along the supply chain at any given time. Companies must stay ahead of these problems, handle them when they do occur, and find ways to proactively prevent them in the future.

A solid supply chain plan can help your business run more smoothly and save money in the long term. Here’s how technology helps with better supply chain planning and resilience.

Using Continuous Supply Chain Design

Continuous supply chain design is an efficient and effective means of protecting one’s supply chain and keeping it running well over long periods. It’s a team effort where an organization ensures a supply chain is operating at peak efficiency while also saving money. The idea is to optimize operational efficiencies (now there’s a fun buzzword for you!).

A supply chain generally covers flow of foods, services, goods and information between different points. Continuous Supply Chain management requires using tech to track, analyze, and adjust this operational flow in real time. Technology—especially AI—and algorithms help businesses gather necessary and valid data companies can use to accomplish this. Software can analyze this information and data (gathered from multiple sources).

On the surface, continuous supply chain design seems but its benefits include reduced costs, better inventory management, more robust demand models, and more accurate forecasting. With such data available to quickly and easily analyze, it’s easier for businesses to make supply chain decisions—and lock in new supply chain plans—with a low margin of error and more power on their side.

Saving Time With Automation

Automation is essential in managing the modern supply chain. By introducing automation tools into your workflow, you can reduce time spent on basic tasks and free up your team to work on more important aspects of planning your supply chain. Manual processes (invoices, POs, etc.) can be costly and time-consuming. Automating them is a practical move. But automation can also help you collect vital data you can use to proactively make decisions. With automation, data can freely flow from one system to another, which not only protects the data’s integrity but ensures it’s accurate and up-to-date due to reduced human error.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence For Supply Chain Planning

Artificial intelligence seems to be on everyone’s minds lately. Whether it’s having some fun with the latest innovation or incorporating powerful tech into your existing business framework, AI has plenty to offer modern industry. Indeed, AI and machine learning offer so much more than a mere novelty. They have intrinsic value that can help automate tasks, improve productivity, and handle data driven approaches to planning. This becomes especially valuable with supply chain planning.

AI can handle the most dedicated and tedious tasks to enable better planning and demand modeling for the entire organization. This essentially helps teams perform better, accomplish what they set out to do, and create resiliency across their supply chain simply by using AI tools.

Data Analytics

Data is one of the most valuable tools a company can have for a supply chain plan. Using the power of real-time data, companies can respond to situations as they occur, plan for the unexpected, and keep everything as accurate as possible along our supply chain.

Big data analytics help identify opportunities, streamline supply chain operations and optimize planning processes. By using this data appropriately, businesses can look at performance trends and forecasts to help optimize the planning stage. This will eventually reduce costs, improve inventory management, and streamline supply chain planning operations. Leveraging data is also the easiest way to gain visibility into your supply chain at every stage making it one of your most important technology tools for supply chain planning.

Supply Chain Planning Software

Perhaps the best and most pragmatic means of planning out your supply chain is to use dedicated software to assist with the task. Find supply chain planning software that empowers its users to work in tandem with powerful technology tools while enabling them to focus on the work at hand. Using a digital twin (a digital copy of your supply chain), AI, comprehensive data, and cloud-based integration, supply chain planning software is the best way to use technology to your advantage.

Whether you’re seeking intelligence on what’s working and what isn’t or aiming to forecast and model demand, the best software solutions will make it possible to plan your supply chain quickly and accurately.