Insights

The Uncertain Future Requires a Configurable Supply Chain Solution

Mark Holmes, Practice Leader, Supply Chain

The aftereffects of the COVID disruptions cast their shadows on the global supply chain. On June 2, the Institute for Supply Management and IHS Markit found growth in the manufacturing sector despite the significant supply chain disruptions and blockages that have continued throughout the pandemic.

According to Timothy Fiore, chair of the ISM's manufacturing business survey committee, "Record-long lead times, wide-scale shortages of critical basic materials, rising commodities prices and difficulties in transporting products are continuing to affect all segments of the manufacturing economy.”

What this means is smart orchestration tools can help organizations continue receiving and distributing their goods while the competition struggles. As the article announcing the survey stated, high demands on the supply chain is a good problem for the global economy to have.

But it is clear the aftereffects of the pandemic will create continual stresses on the supply chain, and the status quo will not do. Leading organizations are increasingly looking for customizable and infinitely configurable supply chain visibility solutions.

Here are four reasons why your supply chain visibility and optimization solution must be customizable.

1. Your organization embraces agility. If your organization has embraced digital transformation, you have likely incorporated some, if not all, lean-agile methodologies into your operations. This means your organization strives for continuous improvement through short periods of iterations (agile) and is focused on eliminating waste and constraints (lean). To do so means you must have a solution that can quickly move with any new approaches or strategy shifts.
2. An unevenly distributed world. While residents and businesses in many Western countries may start acting like the pandemic is over, there were over 330,000 new cases announced on June 7. Brazil averaged 400,000+ new cases a week in May. As of the end of May, Haiti had not administered one dose of the vaccine. Recovery will not come all at once, and will not come to many countries for months after the larger nations return to pre-pandemic operations. Therefore, an adaptable solution can help organizations continue to strategize on the best roadmap for distributing goods.
3. Need to account for unforeseen events. The pandemic jolted our society out of its relative comfort. Hopefully, we will no longer take for granted stretches of normalcy. But the reality is increased global geopolitical friction, international travel and migration, and changes in customer habits will continue to alter the makeup of the world. Organizations will prioritize flexibility so they can adapt when the world again changes overnight.
4. Your organization has unique needs. Simply put, companies should demand more of their vendors. Gone are the days where a “top-of-the-line solution” can coast by on historic record. No solution is worth its price if it does not adapt to your specific needs.

We created our UST Omni™ solution to be a completely configurable supply chain visibility and optimization solution. UST believes our customers’ journeys are our journeys. We “listen” and find unique customer-specific solutions that provide business-defined benefits. Whereas other solutions are “rip and replace,” we take the time and allocate the resources to ensure our solution integrates into our customers’ enterprise systems and the ecosystem of partners to enable actionable insights. It provides full visibility and insights to ensure optimal On-time in-full (OTIF) performance within your supply chain. The key to this is being “Unbiased” to change, whether our client’s change strategy or operations or replacing existing third-party logistics providers.

To learn more about how UST Omni™ has helped organizations thrive through these challenging times, download our case studies eBook today.