The Supply Chain Information Technology blog

At the end of a long day last week, a colleague and I were discussing a scene on a TV sitcom that we had both seen recently. In the scene, a main character is being ridiculed by his family over his advanced degree in cartography.

This discussion got us thinking about paper maps versus GPS navigation and wondering if physical maps are really becoming irrelevant.

Much of the time I would believe so, but I do get an odd form of mild vertigo sometimes when following verbatim the instruction of the GPS unit - like I've given away control to the technology. And sometimes it’s a comfort and a relief to work from a paper map or even stop and ask for directions.

My colleague felt the same, which led me to examine this further from a business perspective. I began to think about whether or not some companies suffer from a similar affliction when it comes to supply chain IT integration.

If you are having issues deciding on the right direction for your supply chain IT integration, here’s an exercise that may provide some insight:

Begin by drawing a one-page diagram that depicts the flow of the following technologies that are relevant to your organization. Use arrows to show the way that you thinkthey should be connected.

 - ERP

 - Forecasting

 - Supplier integration

 - Customer integration

 - WMS/TMS

 - 3PL integration

 - Import/export management

 - Performance dashboard

Once you have your supply chain IT integration map created, ask the following:

-   Are the technologies connected in the real world the way you think they should be?

-   What information is involved?

-   Where are the weak or missing links?

-   What causes the most disruption or error?

-   Do all significant parties involved in the supply chain understand the map?

-   Would everyone draw the same map?

-   Is the map dictating your activity? Are you in control?

Maybe it's a good time for a short cartography exercise, and involving key folks in your supply chain could yield some interesting insights on the best way to getfrom point A to point B.

- Matt

Photo Credit: Jimmy_Joe

Tags: technology, virtual, functionality, supply chain integration

As I was scrolling around the landscape of supply chain blogs and comment boards recently, I came across a question that really struck me as a sign of the times, especially for those of us who are caught up in the ultra fast moving world of information technology and supply chain software. 

The question – What are the leading transportation management software applications available on the market today? – while quite straightforward, left me somewhat confused. 

How can this question be answered without more context – international/domestic, modes, host environments, lanes, stops, etc.? You get the picture. Yet, there was no shortage of definitive answers (more than 35 and growing as I write this) to this “swing for fences” type of question.

Considering the growing interest in Transportation Management System (TMS) solutions over the last few years (as I mentioned in a previous blog post), it’s not surprising to see these kinds of questions and wide-ranging responses. 

The best way (or if you ask me, the only way) to answer this question and identify your best options for the right TMS solution is to approach the question from a broad to narrow perspective in the following stages:

1. Assessment – Consider your products, markets, suppliers and customers. What are the freight flows, supporting systems and enabling technologies? How is transportation effectiveness measured today?

2. Supply Chain Strategy & Organization – What are the most effective ways to organize transportation inbound/transfers/outbound? How are transportation decisions made (i.e., centralized, decentralized)?

3. Requirements Definition – How is transportation planned to support your strategy? How will the transportation requirements be impacted by future business changes and external factors, such as global supply disruptions or fuel price increases? Where will the relevant data reside, and what level of timeliness will be required?

4. Business Case Development – Where are the gaps in the current strategy? What is the magnitude of the opportunity to close the gaps? How much investment will be required, and what will it take to maintain the new system?

5. Evaluation & Selection – Who are the most qualified TMS providers to meet your requirements? What are the critical functional requirements and key evaluation criteria?

6. Configuration and Integration – What will it take to implement this new system? What are the critical risks and who will manage them (or how will they be managed) throughout the implementation? What are the critical responsibilities of my organization, the software vendor, and my trading partners?

Tags: transportation management, optimization, solutions

And due to consumer demand, they are coming into their own like a souped up Mr. Potato Head, adding and re-positioning any necessary parts. 

Functionality -TMS applications have become robust, offering additional modules that were only supported by niche players several years ago. For example, software for Global Trade Management and Financial Settlement were application markets several years ago, but can now be found in the more robust TMS offerings.

Deployment & Configuration Options – TMS providers have embraced software as a service (SaaS) deployment and service-oriented architecture (SOA) platforms, enabling much more cost-effective and functionally adaptable solutions than predecessor applications.

Upgrade Opportunities – Existing TMS customers faced with functional trade-offs or custom modifications and the resulting costly upgrades now have new options to consider. Many customers are turning traditional upgrade efforts into a competitive bid situation and evaluate the changes in the TMS market.  

Tags: transportation management systems, functionality, it systems

I read that the recent market plunge of nearly 1,000 points was due to what we would call in the IT world, "user error;" in other words, an error that occurs someplace between the keyboard and the chair.

It’s been reported that a trader entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million in a transaction that likely involved a Dow component, which in turn triggered the plunge.

That made me think about a project I’m currently working on and some of the discussions that we’ve been having. As I mentioned in a previous post about this project, we are upgrading an old warehouse management system (WMS) to a newer version. More accurately, we are replacing the old WMS with a new WMS since the two versions have so little in common; the systems are so different that it almost feels like they are from a completely different software vendor (which they’re not).

So during "future state" design discussions for projects such as this one, one of the team members – sometimes all of them – will say, "what if ‘Bubba’ presses Enter before he remembers to Tab over to the reason code field and plug in the right value? The old version wouldn’t let "Bubba" do that!"

This is the point where we imagine – and try to proactively avert– many of these Armageddon-type scenarios that could possibly cause the walls of the DC fall in and kill us all. (Okay, maybe that’s a small exaggeration.)

As this room is filled with a bunch of smart folks, we know that we wouldn’t do such a stupid thing, but Bubba would. So we are all paying very close attention to the options where we can limit the likely Bubba-caused disasters through proper change control and training, and those options that could really trigger some major systems’ problems and require extreme human intervention to reconcile. The latter really requires us to make the option Bubba-proof.

The bottom line is that you can never make a system idiot proof. As soon as you do, up will walk an even better idiot and prove you wrong. But what we are doing is walking the fine line in trying to Bubba-proof the system as much as possible while making sure that we capture all the key components to affect proper change control.

What has Bubba done to your system lately and what did you do about it?

--David

Tags: wms