Like many other industries, supply chains in the Transportation & Mobility industry faced its fair share of struggles as an effect of recent global disruptions. The world is now in recovery and new opportunities are opening up for automotive manufacturing in the new normal, but there are still lingering challenges to overcome such as workforce shortages, inflation and supply constraints.
However, the industry has also learned valuable lessons from the unprecedented disruptions, which highlighted critical weaknesses that need to be addressed—the first of which is supply chain resilience. Even the most mature of organizations struggled to keep up with demand as shortages of material and workers disrupted — and in some cases, completely broke down — key supply chains.
The wide-reaching effects of global disruptions also meant that supply chains that relied on extended networks were highly vulnerable. Global organizations that lacked vertically integrated supply chains found their overseas supply and manufacturing cut off when the height of the disruption hit.
Another factor that many supply chains lacked was visibility. Having knowledge of what was happening across the supply chain in real time is important to making agile decisions to adapt. Without this capability, many organizations could not effectively develop a contingency plan. Slow response to disruptions could be costly in terms of both time and money.
Lastly, if the string of disruptive events were any indication, it’s that organizations need to come to terms with the reality that disruption is a constant. For a supply chain to be competitive and maintain its business continuity, it needs to be future-proof and truly resilient to disruption.
Tackling the complexity of supply chain planning and management
Due to the highly complex nature of supply chains, no organization in the world can create the perfect supply chain as the problems that come with it are numerous, convoluted and difficult to solve. However, focusing on asking the right questions can help companies take a step in the right direction for significantly more effective supply chain planning and management:
- How do you manage a distributed value network of facilities, suppliers and customers?
- Can traditional tools deal with today’s planning complexities?
- What data is needed?
- How do you collaborate and include the right stakeholders?
- What if there are competing company goals?
Key capabilities the Transportation & Mobility industry needs today
The Transportation industry needs to innovate their processes in order to respond to current and future supply chain disruptions—from the increase in product innovations driven by the growth of electric and autonomous vehicles, to rapid shifts in supply and demand—in order to thrive in today’s competitive business ecosystem.
There are a few necessary capabilities that have been identified as opportunities for organizations to strengthen their supply chains:
- Real-time collaboration Leverage real-time data and visibility across value networks to improve collaboration with an increased number of suppliers and customers. With more accurate decision making across the production process, Transportation & Mobility manufacturers can ensure more deliveries are made on time, in full.
- Integrated business planning (IBP) Also known as Financial Demand Planning, IBP ties financial goals to the strategic planning process and is key to long-term planning effectiveness.
- Workforce digitalization Ensure better worker engagement with a real-time work-shift scheduling system, simplified digital procedures ad optimized workforce planning.
- Big data and AI-driven predictions Achieve accurate predictions powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to mitigate challenges effectively, avert costly consequences and maintain best practices.
- Robotic processes and automation Apply robotics processes and intelligent automation to routine manual work for higher efficiency, lower costs and a safer working environment.
- Virtual twin Create a virtual twin of your supply chain network and simulate what-if scenarios to identify areas for improvement and growth. Optimize production and operations to find cost-saving opportunities and deliver excellent customer experience at speed and scale.
Through end-to-end digitalization of value networks, Transportation & Mobility companies can gain full visibility into their operations, acquire the ability to integrate and synchronize activities for faster delivery, manage more efficiently, improve production throughput, mitigate risks effectively and run agile business practices. Gain more insights into understanding and solving long-standing supply chain problems; and discover the solution and strategies that DELMIA offers to help Transportation & Mobility companies achieve supply chain excellence. Download the whitepaper Business-Based Optimization for Transportation & Mobility Supply Chains to learn more.