Success factor Supply Chain Visibility: Gartner presents SupplyOn project as best practice

Supply Chain Visibility (SCV) is one of the most important success factors when it comes to managing complex supply chains successfully. And it is an initiative at the top of every CSCO´s agenda. Therefore, Gartner has focused a recently published report “Lessons Learned from Supply Chain Visibility Initiatives – Supply Chain Logistics and Transportation” on this subject by presenting four best practice examples, one of these being a transport management project realized through SupplyOn.

Gartner clearly states: Increasing Supply Chain Visibility is no longer a “nice to have” for any organization, no matter the size, geography or industry. In discussions with CSCOs at Gartner events over the past two years, it became clear that Supply Chain Visibility is a top priority. The importance is also reflected by the high number of initiatives currently being pursued.

But which are the most promising approaches? What to focus on in choosing a provider and what needs to be taken into account during the project phase? Which projects can be considered best practice and how can other companies benefit from these?

Higher Supply Chain Visibility thanks to Real Time Collaboration

One of the use cases outlined by Gartner is based on a SupplyOn solution realized by the automotive supplier Schaeffler. With the implementation of a Transport Order Management System (SupplyOn TOMS), real-time collaboration between all parties involved in the process became feasible, thus simplifying and optimizing the tactical decision making process and the resulting operational execution.

The key drivers of this project were:

• Elevated and inaccurate inventory levels
• Too many manual processes and data entries – leading to high administrative cost and error rates in production planning
• Additional manual efforts and process inefficiencies due to relabeling
• Inefficient transports
• Core ERP system not providing transport/logistic relevant information

The project was initiated not only to build an integrated transportation platform but also to act as a driver for the comprehensive improvement and integration of information exchange among Schaeffler and its business partners. Thanks to multiple connectivity types – EDI and WebEDI – even smaller business partners can be integrated.

These are the main benefits achieved within the project:

• Inventory reduction and optimization by 10 percent
• Better on-time delivery and increased supplier performance from 94 to 98 percent
• Improvements in warehouse efficiency, cash flow and process automation
• More exact data in standardized form, thus less errors in supplier collaboration

The full report includes with additional information about the project and all other best practices on how to enhance your Supply Chain Visibility.

Read more about Schaeffler: Schaeffler wins 2016 elogistics award  – Innovative transport order management provided by SupplyOn.