As businesses become more customer-focused, there is even more pressure to solve for supply chain challenges and reach 100% supply chain visibility. “You are only as strong as your weakest link.” Therefore, it’s necessary to look at every section of the journey – not just at internal systems but also to collaborate with carriers and supply chain partners to ensure the timely delivery of goods.
Also in the mix, Walmart began implementing On Time In Full (OTIF) penalties last year to reduce vendor noncompliance. The objective for Walmart is to always be in stock, but with minimum investment in inventory on the shelves. OTIF measures what percentage of the time a supplier delivers orders that meet the customers’ requirements for fill rate and specified delivery windows. Suppliers that do not deliver within a specified delivery window (not late, and not early either), and with the required minimum fill rate, will be hit with a penalty of 3% of the goods that were not delivered according to the policy. Naturally, suppliers are highly motivated to stop margin erosion due to heavy fines.
Other stakeholders want better logistics tracking, lower costs and less supply chain risk too. Forward-thinking organizations are taking a more holistic approach and investing in supply chain solutions that provide complete supply chain visibility – from manufacturer to end-customer. It makes sense to take advantage of IoT supply chain software and insight analytics now to be competitive. Instead of dealing with angry phone calls asking where a shipment is, you could have ETAs you can trust, satisfied partners, more revenue and lower costs. Happy customers, happy life.
Savi Visibility™ uses millions of data points – IoT, Transportation Management Systems (TMS), carrier, EDI messages and GPS and satellite data from sensors – to deliver live streaming visibility of in-transit inventory. It easily handles unstructured data sets as well as social media and weather patterns which can assist in predicting what might create a disruption.
Lower Supply Chain Risk
More visibility means more accountability and better contingency management. Instead of relying strictly on milestone-based EDI data from contracted partners, Savi Visibility provides continuously updated ETAs to give customers precise status on goods in transit. Organizations cannot solely rely on stale or inaccurate EDI milestone data alone. Savi’s supply chain visibility software makes it easy to identify blind spots and eliminate handoff issues, two of the most common areas for disruptions.
Exception alerting gives managers a heads up that a shipment is trending late, or a handoff was missed. That early notice is critical because it allows time to create solid contingency plans and minimize supply chain risk.
ERP, Warehouse Management (WMS) and TMS systems only provide a siloed view of inventory and planned transit at pre-determined checkpoints, not a live streaming view of in-motion inventory. Savi Visibility uses GPS and satellite sensor data to track inventory location and receives and reports information from environmental sensors on the condition of sensitive and perishable products. If sensors show environmental conditions exceed agreed on SLAs or a shipment is trending late, you will know instantly and can make decisions to change shipment plans or submit a replacement order.
Because Savi processes both real-time and historical data, from a multitude of data points, there is a comprehensive picture of overall performance and real-time risks involved with each transit point. Another example, if a critical shipment is trending late and planned to arrive at a port with a known history of long turnaround times, alerts will trigger early enough so managers can decide to redirect the shipment to a less congested port. Possessing end-to-end 100% supply chain visibility means more opportunities to mitigate theft or tampering and greater control over on-time delivery.
The Value of Knowing
The value of knowing is everything. Whether that means knowing where your goods are, where high-risk zones are, which carriers have better timeliness records, or which distribution centers have the longest wait times etc., it’s the information you need to make better planning decisions. In an industry full of silos and supply chain blind spots, Savi Visibility enables supply chain managers and partners to collaborate effectively and work together to solve transit problems. Having access to this level of visibility reduces disruptions and increases quality control. Improving stakeholder relations is a win-win game, resulting in more accountability and better management of resources. And the crown jewel? Increased efficiency and cost savings that give you more cash on hand to reinvest in your business.
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