DISRUPTION-BUSTING MOVES FOR 2023 AND BEYOND
VERTICALLY INTEGRATE YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN
DON’T RELY ON ONE MODE OR ONE PLAN “No plan survives rst contact” can be as true for supply chain managers as it is for military planners. (Translated: No single plan can bear the brunt of disruptions.) Accurate, up-to-date supply chain visibility is the critical factor when conditions quickly change. Visibility supports both adjustments to your regular logistics operations, as well as helps your teams develop out-of-the-box solutions that might not otherwise be apparent or possible. For example, single-mode shipping could be the most effective solution in “normal” times. But, when that one mode suffers disruptions due to labor, weather, or other problems, a multimodal approach might better ful ll an urgent need. The challenge of working with multimodal logistics operations is they can stretch over thousands of miles with shipments transitioning between ocean, rail, and motor carriers. This creates a critical need for real-time visibility. It also demands that your enterprise be able to make quick decisions and successfully implement them. Now is the time to prepare for sudden and inevitable disruptions. Develop relationships with partners that bring experience beyond your organization’s core competencies to help you handle the next disturbance in the supply chain force.
Leaders always say, “control the controllables.” But what are the controllables for inbound logistics at a time when in ation is soaring, the economy is softening, inventories are in excess, and labor is still hard to nd? In our opinion, the answer is to get more vertically integrated into your end-to-end supply chain. How many of us outsource activities to give us ease of business? These days, data is power and the more vertically integrated our supply chain has become, the better visibility we have gotten, and the more control we have gained. This vertical integration has led us to open our own consolidation center in EMEA for product destined to North America. The real-time data around inventory, and more importantly when it has pertinent delays, allows the North America team to immediately pivot and look for options to keep the supply chain moving at the pace our customers expect. We may not be able to control labor strikes, but we now can proactively reroute inventory in a different continent so it arrives well before the customer will call on it locally. Now, if we could just gure out how to achieve 100% forecast accuracy.
–Stephanie Silvestre Senior Vice President, Supply Chain & Operations Strategy Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits
–Danny Dever Product Manager, RailSight Suite of Applications TransmetriQ
Recent events have given a push to elevating disruption mitigation as a core strategic initiative as the risks and consequences of supply chain disruption increased visibly in organizations. With an Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled intelligent supply chain, companies can now collect thousands of data points that can be utilized to improve each step of the supply chain process. Predictive analytics and big data will increasingly empower companies with insights to reduce downtime, optimize workflows, and keep operations running at their maximum efficiency.
–SANJAY SHARMA, CEO, ROAMBEE
152 Inbound Logistics • January 2023
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