strategicinsight VISIBILITY AND CONTROL
©2016 EnerSys Delaware Inc. d/b/a Douglas Battery. All rights reserved.
Trademarks and logos are the property of EnerSys and its affiliates unless
otherwise noted. Subject to revision without prior notice. E.&O.E.
Today’s batteries are used in a wide variety of
applications. Whether your business is light duty
or demands maximum power, the Douglas Legacy®
Power System can meet your needs.
Douglas Battery
1255 Creekshire Way, Suite 221
Winston-Salem, NC 27103
1-800-211-3684
www.douglasbattery.com
orders, shipments, inventory, sales, costs, assets, and other
supply chain-related items.”
That may sound like a tall order, but for companies that
can achieve it, the rewards are vast. Armed with sharper visi-
bility, retailers can better answer daily questions about order
status, shipment location, inventory counts, and forecast
accuracy, the study says.
To reach that goal, most companies must overcome challenges such as data stuck in silos, infrequent batch communications, low-tech shipping processes, and frequently
changing trading partners, the report concludes.
SHINING A LIGHT ON “BLACK HOLES”
For many years, those hurdles were too high for the average
retailer to clear, but recent technology advances have given
them a boost, says Jim Hayden, vice president of solutions at
Savi Technology Inc. Data can finally flow freely and swiftly
among the links in a supply chain thanks to cheaper computing and data storage, along with sensors that boast greater
transmission range and longer battery endurance.
Those devices permit users to constantly monitor the status of each shipment, instead of waiting for drivers or dock
workers to check a shipment in when it arrives at a terminal
or crosses a border, as had long been the case.
“What we’ve seen in the supply chain is that the definition
of visibility is milestone-based—just asking, ‘Was it picked
up from the factory?’ or ‘Has it arrived at the warehouse?’”
But that’s all changing. Retailers with sharper visibility can
finally peer inside those black holes and see exactly where
they need to tweak their processes in response to changing
market conditions.
