Plan and control your supply processes with precision

Shipping delays and material supply bottlenecks have become a routine part of production in many industries. This has profound ripple effects when production processes get out of sync, lines have to be stopped, and standstills loom. It also presents tremendous challenges to production planners, who must manage uncertainties in the supply chain despite often lacking the critical data needed to respond to bottlenecks proactively. That’s why it’s still common practice to err on the side of caution when giving ETAs for material shipments. Transport disruptions and other potential shipping delays are often overlooked when advance shipping notifications are not shared with the ERP system. This reduces just-in-time or just-in-sequence strategies to a roll of the dice. What’s lacking is cross-location, cross-enterprise communication tracking all inbound logistics events in real time and enabling predictive, data-driven production logistics.

An integrated solution consisting of a production planning system and supply chain control tower delivers the visibility you need for your inbound logistics. Examples of how this solution benefits production planning:

• Identifies potential transport problems and analyzes impacts on scheduling and production processes
• Automatically updates ETA of material shipments for production
• Leverages updated transport data to modify the affected production orders

The combined power of a production planning system and supply chain control tower delivers visibility across transport processes and greater flexibility in planning and managing production. Production planners get reliable data, giving them greater flexibility in how they do their jobs. The data-driven control of inbound logistics makes it possible to identify potential problems as early as possible and thoroughly analyze the impact on scheduling and production processes.

Augmenting production planning and control with validated supply chain data improves outcomes, since planners are always working in their systems with the latest shipping data. This gives them a critical head start to take countermeasures if any deviations occur and optimize production orders where necessary. Production runs more smoothly, costs come down, fluctuations in demand can be better managed—and above all, customers are happier.