Many multinational companies have already put in place various kinds of control towers – initially focusing on creating transactional visibility throughout the supply chain. The physical world of control towers is now meeting the world of planning in so called end-to-end control towers. Key benefits include improved predictability and visibility, more flexible and personalized service offering, cost reductions and fact-based strategic/tactical decision making.

On top of this integration of the two types of control towers, Carlo Peters, Principal Consultant at BCI Global, observes a need for companies to move into the digital supply chain (planning) arena: “Early adaptors are implementing lights off planning and putting in place digital twins that are a digital copy of the normal world for planning - allowing for automated planning processes. Too many companies today have less optimal processes and conduct lots of firefighting and efforts in providing information to internal stakeholders.”

A digital supply chain has various meanings for different people. One can look at specific supply chain elements e.g. digitization and shaping of demand, pro-active customer delivery notifications through IoT or integrated and automated and S&OP planning. The added value differs by the focus one has.

Getting the foundation right is imperative. That does not mean one should forget the control tower. But this will act only as the foundation for many companies to enable a digital transformation. “Start with a clear vision, define your digital roadmap step by step. Test, fail and learn fast. And subsequently scale-up and harvest the benefits. Digitize and automate processes, and do not forget to take the human factor into account. New capabilities are needed, so an organizational transformation process needs to go along with digitization of your supply chains”, says Carlo Peters.

BCI hosted on this topic an interactive roundtable together with Samsung SDS with supply chain executives across various industries.

 

Interested in the presentation of Carlo Peters on control towers, file here your download request.

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