Introduction

A supply chain  control tower  is an important tool in managing supply chains more efficiently, helping organizations resolve issues in real time. What is control tower for supply chains? It’s not a physical tower. You use a supply chain control tower software solution to increase visibility into your operations and control costs, gathering all pertinent data about your partners, including manufacturers and suppliers.

Risk-averse supply chain executives rely on supply chain control towers to help their companies become more resilient as they address potential disruptions and seek to work with greater agility. Executives have a mandate to move products out the door and into the hands of their loyal customers on time, in any location. At the same time, these executives are focused on reducing expenses as they optimize their supply chains.

A digital control tower supply chain solution is instrumental in optimizing the flow of resources and products in the face of uncertainty and unpredictable world events.

Key Capabilities and Benefits of Supply Chain Control Towers

Executives who are still on the fence about deploying a control tower in supply chain systems should be aware of the key capabilities and benefits, including:

* Use resources more efficiently:

With better insight into your supply chain, you can adjust how you deploy labor, such as when bottlenecks occur. At the same time, you use the analytics from the control tower to help you automate routine, manual tasks, which is essential for streamlining operations.

* Quickly respond to disruptions:

The historical and real-time data provided by your control tower gives you better analytics for supply chain management. This enables your team to respond faster to any disruptions and work in a more agile fashion.

* Control costs:

As you examine data from the supply chain control tower, you can better predict inventory requirements, resulting in reduced holding costs. Executives check real-time inventory data to determine what products are about to go out of date. You can also gain insight into how you might improve your picking and packing activities for speed and accuracy.

* Improve revenue:

Which suppliers are the most profitable for your supply chain? Use data from the control tower to review historical data and improve your strategy, such as to optimize supply routes. Analytics help you replenish items faster, avoiding stockouts that cut into your bottom line.

* Reduce lead time:

You’ll identify potential delays and be better poised to overcome bottlenecks in the supply chain. Accordingly, you’ll enjoy shorter lead times when obtaining vital parts, tools, equipment, and products.

Types of Supply Chain Control Towers

There are five main types of supply chain control towers for you to consider, depending on the needs and objectives of your organization:

1. End-to-End (E2E)

End-to-end supply chain control towers give you comprehensive, cross-departmental visibility into external and internal processes and systems.

2. Fulfillment

Fulfillment control towers are designed to help you improve the movement of package shipments. Greater insight via supply chain analytics enables you to speed up deliveries while curbing the costs involved in moving items from point A to point Z.

3. Inventory

To optimize your stock tracking and inventory management, use an inventory supply chain control tower. Doing so makes it less likely that your organization will suffer from shortages or go out-of-stock.

4. Logistics and Transportation

With logistics and transportation control towers, you will have access to better data on each delivery, so that you can track and trace products more efficiently as they move through the system. You’ll get timelier shipping notifications, crucial for pleasing your loyal customers.

5. Supply Assurance

Ensure you always have adequate supplies by deploying a supply assurance control tower, which enables better delivery planning.

‍Achieving End-to-End Visibility With a Purpose-Built Control Tower

Purpose-built control towers optimize the resilience of your supply chain, providing end-to-end visibility. For example, they give you real-time intelligence, vital for managing disruptions. You can forecast more accurately. What’s more, the control tower connects you with partners and suppliers for improved collaboration.

Because of the sheer volume of data involved in supply chain operations, your purpose-built control tower will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable your team to make better decisions. ‍

‍Industry-Specific Applications of Supply Chain Control Towers

Here are some industry-specific examples of supply chain control towers to illustrate their capabilities.

Healthcare:

A supply chain control tower facilitates better inventory management to avoid losses and improve patient care.

Grocery:

One of the more prominent uses of control towers in retail occurs in supermarkets, which harness the data for demand management and stock visibility to prevent shortages.

Industrial:

In industrial facilities, supply chain control towers optimize service parts management, which is instrumental for meeting service contract SLAs.

Predictive, Prescriptive, and Descriptive Analytics in Supply Chains

You may already be searching for solutions that involve descriptive predictive and prescriptive analytics. Indeed, analytics play a significant role in supply chain control towers, optimizing your decision-making process. Control towers help you get a handle on your supply chain data analytics. Understanding predictive vs. prescriptive vs. descriptive analytics in supply chain systems is important.

Be particularly aware of the differences between descriptive vs. prescriptive analytics.

Descriptive analytics in supply chain systems involve studying the historical data you’ve accumulated to better understand trends and demand patterns. Study this data to find new opportunities for business.

Predictive analytics in supply chain systems relies on machine learning algorithms so you can forecast emerging trends, as well as possible disruptions.

Prescriptive analytics go one step further than descriptive and predictive analysis by offering you recommended actions to achieve better outcomes.

Consider supply chain analytics examples, such as the system suggesting the best inventory levels to maintain from season to season. The data can suggest better transportation routes for you to use. You may also apply the analytics to fine-tune your price-setting protocols.

Organizations that understand how a control tower works know they gather comprehensive data to enable the implementation of insights from these analytics. Humans cannot crunch the numbers and make sense of the enormous set of data on their own, so they use AI for descriptive predictive and prescriptive analytics.

It’s valuable to integrate all three analytics types to convert your incoming data into strategic, real-time actions, which boosts resilience and enhances efficiency across the supply chain.

Key Considerations When Deploying a Supply Chain Control Tower

To create effective control towers, remember that your analytics will only be as good as the data you capture. Harnessing predictive analytics in supply chain systems requires practical and actionable outputs from data.

Be aware that management may need to adjust their mindset to ensure effective adoption of your supply chain control tower, whether you build it or buy it. Develop a roadmap and understand the key performance indicators you expect to use with the control tower to verify it’s helping you achieve your supply chain optimization goals.  ‍

You Can Rely on ketteQ’s Supply Chain Control Tower Solutions to Optimize Operations

Supply chain control towers will improve how you do business by enhancing visibility from end to end, enabling you to collaborate more effectively with partners and suppliers. A purpose-built control tower enhances your supply chain’s resilience, helping you to anticipate and address demand and work with more agility, such as rapidly redeploying employees amid bottlenecks.

Contact us to learn why companies rely on ketteQ’s solutions to transform supply chain operations across industries.