The
operational efficiency and performance of supply chains is often fettered by
the lack of real-time visibility, and compounded by limited workload
portability and data latency.
Cisco
Intercloud Fabric offers an interesting solution for addressing supply chain
issues. Enclosed, I summarize the study of a few related Cisco whitepapers and add my
overall industry perspective.
Intercloud
Fabric enables spontaneous, immediate connection with all supply chain nodes,
provides real-time, more granular visibility into data and inventory movement
and will increase on-time shipments, react to lead time attainment, lead time
as scheduled and other key performance indicators faster.
Cisco has
just completed its proof of concept stage:
Cisco
Intercloud Fabric deploys a hybrid environment that is open, highly secure.
Private and public clouds merge seamlessly. The same network security, quality
of service (QoS) and access control policies apply to the public clouds.
Everyone across the supply chain (including Cisco customers with access to data
in the cloud) can know when and where a shipment is throughout the delivery
lifecycle.
The
Intercloud Fabric supports data management and process innovation. Participants
will become more adept at harnessing intelligence from the data being
collected, and using analytics from reactive to proactive to predictive
capabilities and faster decision making throughout the supply chain ecosystem.
The new
target end state of the Cisco Supply Chain with Intercloud Fabric looks about
as follow:
The supply
chain and logistics are tremendous areas of opportunity for the Internet of
Everything (IoE). Technology trends such as cloud and mobility only broaden the
opportunities further.
Working
across supply chains for over 15 years, I have seen the benefit of looking
first at business processes and aligning those with markets and key
stakeholders. Throwing technology at a problem without understanding the real
issues, often only increase the problems. However, once structures, processes
and people issues are properly, it is important to support and automate the
solution with technology.
Today’s
supply chain have grown tremendously complex – despite all simplification
efforts – and it is wise to use the benefits of digital technologies to
maximize agility, effectiveness and efficiency. Cisco’s Intercloud Fabric offers
an interesting approach and solutions. But other tools & methodologies in
the market provide valuable options.
What
framework, tools and methodologies do you propose for supply chain management
and why?
+++
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