VISIBILITY AND CONTROL
technologyreview
The promise of
end-to-end visibility
Visibility across the supply chain is about
more than transportation optimization.
It can help reduce risks, promote better
inventory management, and much more.
IT’S A GIVEN THAT SUPPLY CHAINS HAVE
become more complex as they have become
more global. It’s also a given that competitive
pressures demand that those managing supply
chains look for ways to trim costs, reduce risks,
and shorten cycle times.
Accomplishing all that across an elongated
supply chain also requires the ability to know
what is happening from end to end and the
agility to shift gears quickly as circumstances
change. That requires visibility to all the critical
nodes in the chain—suppliers, carriers, customs
brokers, and bankers, to name a few. True end-to-end multi-enterprise visibility may be a ways
off for most companies. However, technology
and events are converging in ways that make it
no longer a far-fetched notion.
“This should be on the radar of leadership,”
says Greg Kefer of GT Nexus, which provides a
cloud-based collaboration platform for shippers, carriers, and other supply chain participants. “I would be stunned if companies are not
looking at their supply chains after the events in
Japan and Thailand.” While the effects of last
year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan and
floods in Thailand are still reverberating among
supply chains worldwide, those companies that
got out in front of the crisis and were able to
react swiftly fared better than those that could
not adjust their networks. “The whole notion of
operational excellence depends on vertical
operational excellence,” Kefer argues.
“That goes right to shareholder value.
Companies win on the strength of their supply
chain operations,” he says. And that, in turn,
demands greater visibility into exactly what is
happening throughout the chain, he adds.
VISIBILITY ALLOWS SPEED
Bill McBeath, chief research officer for ChainLink
Research, a Newton, Mass.-based supply chain
research firm, has looked closely at trade logistics
visibility and what it can do for companies with
complex international supply chains. He argues
those tools not only can help manage transportation but can also support the financial components that drive the whole system.
Late last year, McBeath wrote an article for the
ChainLink Research website (“Supply Chain
Financial Network Platforms: Trade-Logistics-Visibility”) on how supply chain visibility can
accelerate cycle time by providing business part-
