by Carl E. Padovano
Every day new technologies emerge that assist us in making ourselves heard. Today we can orchestrate the movements of an army effortlessly by publishing split-second “twits.”
Our communiqués are lightning fast, but unless we spell out our instructions super-distinctly our commands could cause a global incident. One misunderstood twit could ruin a project, or worse, ruin the relationship between ourselves and our working partners.
Similarly, if we are to realize a fully synchronized supplychain, we must correct the one-way integration of old and begin to “peer over the backyard fence” in order to collaborate, assist, and “prop-up” our trading partners’ systems. Integration software has evolved to a position that has been hard to believe a few years back. Platform-specific data translation and single-choice communication protocols have given way to visual, standards-based, cross-platform, data transformation tools. Simple send and receive messages are dynamic, granting access to appropriate data stores at significant occurrences in time (events). Additionally, we now enjoy commanding multiple transport protocols that are stable, secure, and widely adopted by our supply chain partners.
Remaining however, are the same integration obstacles that have existed since “the beginning.” Some obstacles were brought to the supply chain intentionally. Some have spontaneously generated through a continued state of non-education; others created out of the sheer necessity for business survival.
Obstacles To Effective Supply Chain Integration
- Comply or Die – the term Comply or Die underscored the intensity retailers were asserting to their vendors to participate in their EDI programs in the early years. The pressure of having to comply to the EDI technology was the first priority of the vendor trading partner. The second priority, if a priority at all, was integration. As a result, many short-sighted, “quick-fix,” solutions provided compliant data. However, the repercussions of the self-generated data contained therein, caused, and continues to cause, a severe wound the global supply chain at large.
- Predictive Work Flow and Process Data - the supply chain is dependent on measuring and monitoring the physical movement of items and services and integrating that data with each trading partner within the supply chain. Predictive systems that mimic, or predict, physical supply chain activities, often for the sake creating compliant integration data, are severe obstacles to supply chain integration. Most notably, items, as they enter the supply chain at point-of-manufacture are serialized to shipping containers and tracked with data shared by the community to use in their own specific applications. Predictive data of item to container serialization and the sharing of that data continue to cause irreparable harm to all partners it touches.
- Data Entry – speaks for itself, however, supply chain integration will never reach its full potential until machine readable data is utilized and embraced 100%. The instances of data entry causing inaccurate data integration are common knowledge. Anything less than the electronic capture of data from point-of-manufacture to point-of-consumption will continue to have a compounded negative effect on supply chain integration.
- Item Management – The management of identifying items and services to the extended supply chain remains as the most difficult challenge of manufacturers and service providers today. The effect of transaction errors, caused by the inaccuracy of item identification between end user and provider, is said to occur at a rate of 30% per business transaction (invoice). By not integrating item and service data prior to (or during) provisioning amounts to considerable loss of revenue and effectiveness.
It is difficult not to reference integration in terms other than “bringing together pieces of products, services, and information together for the purpose of solving a problem.” But integration is more than bridging one computer platform to another. More so, integration is more than performing connect-the-dot from one element of data to another.
Rules For Supply Chain Data Integration:
- Identify Global Locations
- Identify Items and Services
- Normalize source data to a single enterprise Item or Service.
- Provide Normalized data to client (“next system”)
- Verify anticipated values (like pricing) from source.
- Minimize Client Finishing – that is, provide data sets in state of completeness to perform the intended purpose. For example, if your warehouse management system is responsible for creating ASN manifests, provide ALL the data necessary to the host to create the Advance Ship Notice without further finishing or “primping.”
- Provide process and methodology for diagnosing and correcting integration errors.
Understanding the ultimate purpose of the information we are receiving and sending will bring the greatest value to our global supply chain. One in the same are the benefits to our companies and adjoining systems within the supply chain. As we all share a common goal, the success of our community will depend on meaningful integration between ourselves and the trading partner neighbors with whom we share information.
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