A reader comments:
Re:
Planning The Factory of the Future
The trends you discuss are working in combination to challenge supply chain management with global operations, multiple partners, complex processes and products, short product lifecycles and demanding consumers.
This requires integration, on a global basis, between functions and entities like never before.
Adaptability and flexibility become key as you try to navigate the NPI process and a high-mix manufacturing model as the consumer market wants ever more choices.
While I believe companies are becoming wise to the need for a different approach to Supply Chain Management, the technology to enable this change is the fundamental stumbling block.
While traditional supply chain planning (SCP) solutions have made tremendous strides in improving planning, the "real world" challenges of highly volatile demand, shorter product life cycles, unexpected supply disruptions and complex outsourcing & supplier relationships are driving rapid change and increased complexity in supply chain operations. The result is that today's enterprise applications are often out-of-sync with reality and can't support the level of agility that companies need today or in the future.
This is actually the theme of one of our recent white papers "Why you need to re-evaluate your approach to supply chain planning." The paper highlights the key capabilities that a "factory of the future" needs (including enterprise-wide supply chain visibility, alerting, what-if anal ysis and scorecarding.)
You can read more about this at
http://www.21stcenturysupplychain.com
R. Littleson
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Today's Enterprise Applications are Often Out-of-Sync with Reality
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