Global Operations and Supply Chain Strategies
By:- Israr K. Raja
International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Information Sharing in Global
Supply Chain Operations
Importance of Information sharing
Information sharing can radically improve the way global companies
and their partners do business, especially in the wake of increasingly
globalization and outsourcing, which has and will continue to have a
profound effect on supply chain operations.
By exchanging information such as
inventory levels,
forecasting data, and
sales trends,
companies can
reduce cycle times,
fulfill orders more quickly,
cut out millions of dollars in excess inventory
improve forecast accuracy and
customer service.
Information Sharing in Global
Supply Chain Operations
Information sharing can be applied to almost all the core
domains of corporate operational activities including
Global operations.
Starting from the development
chain process where information sharing can happen in the
product design stages and
product life cycle management activities
with both internal and external partners.
In the customer chain processes information sharing can
help in formulating customer experience strategies,
increase customer service effectiveness and operations.
Issues In Information Sharing
The psychological barriers around information sharing are
real and imperative.
Sometimes there is a real and justified fear that
information sharing across the corporate boundaries can
turn into a competitive disadvantage.
By formulating effective business policies, agreements and
business plans that an enterprise can use to establish
guidelines and rules for exchange of information with
supply chain partners can help assuage those barriers.
This will ultimately help mitigate the fear of information
sharing and improve efficiency and create new
opportunities for all stakeholders
Benefits of Information Sharing in
GSCM
Information sharing can be most effective and least
disruptive for all concerned when done by
implementing the available technological tools, which
would accomplish the process in a controlled and
secured way thereby streamlining the global supply
chain operations
Benefits of Information Sharing in
GSCM
Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment
workflows and solutions exist in the supply chain process to
enhance supply chain integration and data sharing across
enterprises but very few companies effectively use it to their
competitive advantage.
The current challenges that organizations face in implementing
these workflows really revolve around non-integrated processes
and systems with retailers and manufacturers operating out of
their own silo and different planning data.
This results in excessive response times, costs and inventory due
to forecast inaccuracy.
Retailers on one hand face stock-outs, material shortages, lost
sales and poor customer service to name a few.
On the other hand manufacturers get plagued by obsolescence
and inventory costs impacting margins.
Benefits of Information Sharing in
GSCM
SAP's Supply Network Collaboration tool, JDA's
Collaborative Supply Planning and Execution tools
offer sophisticated and rich workflows to enable
information sharing with the extended supply chain
partners which
provides timely visibility into supplier fulfilment
constraints
facilitates speedy resolution resulting in reduced
purchasing costs,
expedited freight and
better supplier negotiating capabilities
Benefits of Information Sharing in
GSCM
A large apparel, footwear and golf equipment
manufacturer implemented key features of
collaborative supply planning and procurement
execution tool to achieve forecast analysis and
collaborative workflows on the planning side and firm
order collaboration with vendors on the procurement
execution side.
Benefits of Information Sharing in
GSCM
The gains achieved were two-fold.
On the planning side sharing of mid to long term
forecast and publishing near term requisition forecast
to suppliers and receiving supply commits from them
resulted in reduced material shortages and stock-outs
at the component level.
Additionally, synchronized and tightly integrated
procurement and manufacturing planning activities
gave planners the ability to quickly re-plan globally
based on changes in execution
Benefits of Information Sharing in
GSCM
On the other hand Intelligent Buyer-Supplier approval
workflows facilitated timely visibility of supplier's
fulfilment constraints and their resolution by the
corporate procurement group, resulting in
aforementioned benefits of reduced procurement
costs at different levels.
The global buying group also achieved execution
efficiencies with a single view of all procurement
worldwide, managing different replenishment
programs and multiple communication channels with
their supplier base using a single system
Benefits of Information Sharing in
GSCM
In the past manual order processing, spreadsheet
dependent and fax/phone method of communication
with suppliers made a dent not only to the corporate
procurement budget but also generated global
operational plans that were out-of-date because of
limited-to-no visibility into supplier's plan and
operational constraints.
Conclusion
The global organizations harness the power of technology to
collaborate with their supply chain partners to exchange
information and work as a single entity.
All this can be done with the end objective of having greater
understanding of the end consumer behaviour and effectively
responding to the changes in the market place from a supply
chain perspective so that manufacturers make the products only
when they are needed and retailers store and sell them to end
customers, drastically cutting down on the inventory levels and
associated costs.
In the long term timely exchange of information will not
only improve supply chain responsiveness but will also
enhance cash flow and profitability to every link in the
supply chain and ultimately contribute to consumer
satisfaction.
