Recording webinar End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility

Supply Chain Media and PwC organized a webinar about End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility.

End-to-end visibility across the entire supply chain — from materials to customers and back, and all the steps in between — is a prerequisite for achieving integrated, connected and self-optimising supply chain ecosystems. According to a recent global survey by PwC the level of digitalization plays an important role in this: Digital Champions already recognise this; 86% see supply chain visibility as a priority. They’ve also invested in making it real; 62% have implemented solutions, more than twice as other companies. Visibility is an area where they’ve already seen the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with 43% of Digital Champions saying they are making use of AI solutions to generate visibility and make better decisions.

Digital Champions have come a long way towards achieving a high level of supply chain visibility. Most have visibility over product contents, key financial metrics and logistics flows in near-real-time. While the survey also showed that there are many companies that haven’t yet mastered these basics.

More impressive is the large number of Digital Champions who already have the capacity to use a control tower to generate a digital twin of what’s happening in their supply chains. A digital twin is essentially a virtual replica of the supply chain that can be used to run simulations, for example by comparing what is actually happening in the supply chain against plans (e.g., on capacities, demand, inventories), with the ability to make recommendations.

About 13% of Digital Champions implementing visibility in their supply chains already have next-level supply chains in place — they’re using an AI-enabled control tower, which facilitates orchestration of the end-to-end supply chain. An AI-enabled control tower automates decision-making and enables optimisation of the supply chain ecosystem. For example, it captures actual lead times as well as near real-time shipment, order and consumption information. By linking this information to the planning layer, inventory plans can be dynamically and autonomously optimised, bringing companies closer to an autonomous supply chain.

In this webinar PwC and Supply Chain Media explained the different angles in End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility. What are the key enablers to create visibility? How have Digital Champions used these to improve supply chain visibility? And how can a practical self-assessment tool for End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility, developed by Supply Chain Media, help in this journey?

The recorded webinar is available on the YouTube channel of Supply Chain Movement. The slide deck is available for download below.