ners with crucial information. In the piece, which focused
on the financial aspects of visibility, he noted, “trade-logis-
tics-visibility platforms can help by providing lenders with
detailed visibility into the status of various milestones in
production, shipment, delivery, and inspection. … By hav-
ing near real-time visibility and access to documents con-
firming the achievement of milestones (e.g., successful
inspection), instead of waiting for paper documents to
arrive, banks can improve payment processing speeds,
accuracies, and efficiencies.”
McBeath claims that end-to-end visibility back through
the supply base opens a lot of doors for managers. In an
interview with DC VELOCITY, he said, “It enables a lot of dif-
ferent things. For example, if you want to do performance
improvements, you can see where the bottlenecks are,
where the breakdowns in processes are.”
He offers an example of how visibility across the supply
chain, including lenders, could work to reduce cycle times.
“If you look in particular at smaller Asian suppliers, they
may not have the cash flow or credit financing they need for
raw materials,” he says. “If they need to wait for sufficient
down payment to have the cash on hand to order raw mate-
rials, that slows down the whole process. Visibility helps in
a couple of ways. If lenders have a history of the perform-
ance of the supplier and the supplier has a firm order, they
can put those together. They are more likely to forward
money to the supplier.” That allows the vendor to order
materials sooner, leading to earlier production and thus a
shorter order cycle time.
VISIBILITY ALLOWS AGILITY
Lorcan Sheehan, senior vice president of marketing for
ModusLink Global Solutions, points to consumer electronics as an industry whose operations could be improved with
greater multi-enterprise visibility. Typically, he says, consumer goods companies place orders with contract manufacturers 13 weeks out, providing time to acquire components and schedule manufacturing. For offshore manufacturers, add another six weeks for transit time. That long
lead time makes adjusting to changes in demand or other
market shifts a real challenge.
“In many cases, companies are planning and making
decisions in June or July for selling in November,” he says.
VISIBILITY AND CONTROL technologyreview
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