Five Types of Supply Chain Management Tools

Within supply chain, there are a variety of tools and softwares that are needed in order to effectively reduce cost, eliminate waste, and optimize efficiency within your manufacturing operation. Without utilizing these tools, the simplest or smallest mistake could add up to thousands of dollars in lost revenue or cost, which is where your competitors will take advantage of the situation and ultimately get ahead.

Fortunately, supply chain management softwares have enabled manufacturing facilities, large and small, to be able to survive within the market and avoid crucial mistakes. Supply chain management tools and softwares enable users to reduce errors while also optimizing the entire supply chain process with ease, which is why utilizing these softwares are a must. Among the supply chain tools and techniques, there are five types that stand out that every manufacturing facility should utilize. Therefore, here are five types of supply chain tool packages that every supply chain should utilize in order to enhance their manufacturing operation.

Five Types of Supply Chain Management Tools

The five types of supply chain management tools include the following:

• Lean Inventory Tools - Utilizing the lean methodology and the concept of lean production has become by far one of the most popular methodologies among production facilities. The idea behind lean manufacturing includes creating what is needed within the moment, determined by current and projected customer demand. Before lean production, manufacturers would create far too many goods and had an overabundance of product. This resulted in a substantial amount of inefficiency, wasted time, and high inventory costs. The overall goal of the practice is to optimize your production planning by cutting down on warehouse space, inventory costs, and the different procedures of storing excess inventory. Utilizing lean inventory tools provide quite a bit of ROI for a business, decreasing the need for warehouse space and streamlining their labor force.
• Shipping Status Tools - Utilizing shipping status tools such as alerts and updates are extremely popular among supply chain management tools. With high volume supply chains that have various types of cargo being shipped to customers around the world, it is important to always be aware when something goes down or when there is a problem. Ultimately, factors such as going global result in growth, but they also will leave your supply chain to be more vulnerable to errors. This is why real-time updates are a must, because you must be on top of any problems that arise, or one mistake or mishap could result in a substantial cost for your company.
• Order Processing Tools - Order processing is extremely important to supply chain, in which supply chain management software provides tools needed to make this task easier and more efficient. This variety of tools support all functions across order processing, such as sales order processing, order management, order fulfillment, and more. These supply chain optimization tools automate the activities involved in order processing using EDO and similar technology to directly capture order data. Ultimately, this will lead to time reduction among the traditional processes pertaining to orders that were needed to be manually generated.
• Demand Forecasting Tools - When utilizing analytics, SCM software is capable of processing a substantial amount of data within a fraction of a time that it would take analysts. Not only does analytics provide insight into past practices, but it can also create potential forecast for the future. Through utilizing past trends and real-time data, supply chain software can help you anticipate future consumers’ demand. This aids tremendously in providing the essential information needed to generate a production plan/schedule and ultimately allow you to be prepared for demand, leading to less inefficiencies and wait-time.
• Collaboration Portal Tools - Collaboration portal tools allow you to communicate issues pertaining to the supply chain. This includes communicating issues such as bottlenecks, order issues, and various others. Utilizing portals will aid all parties that have access to production progress, order forecasts, product specifications, purchase orders shipment history, and more. Collaboration portals allow for full supply chain visibility.

A software that supplies these tools (or forms of these tools) is PlanetTogether’s Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software (APS). This software generates production schedules based off of demand forecast, production requirements, and various other components pertaining to production planning and scheduling. PlanetTogether’s Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software (APS) has become a necessity for manufacturers that are seeking to take their manufacturing operation to the next level.

Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software

Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software has become a must for modern-day manufacturing operations due to customer demand for increased product mix and fast delivery combined with downward cost pressures. APS can be quickly integrated with a ERP/MRP software to fill gaps where these system lack planning and scheduling flexibility and accuracy. Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) helps planners save time while providing greater agility in updating ever-changing priorities, production schedules, and inventory plans.

• Create optimized schedules balancing production efficiency and delivery performance
• Maximize output on bottleneck resources to increase revenue
• Synchronize supply with demand to reduce inventories
• Provide company-wide visibility to capacity
• Enable scenario data-driven decision making

Implementation of Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software will take your manufacturing operations to the next level of production efficiency, taking advantage of the operational data you already have in your ERP.