Manage Logistics, Forecasting and your Supply Chain

Introduction

With so much disruption in the past few years, customers are fed up with promises that aren’t delivered on. For manufacturers to be successful in this highly turbulent environment, they need to produce high quality goods rapidly. Having digital resources is essential to meeting the high demands of customers. Conquering logistics, forecasting and communicating with your supply chain will allow you to fulfill your commitments to customers without wasting money.

Logistics

Moving the flow of goods from source, warehouse, distribution network, and end-customer can’t be done with old-school logistics systems in a competitive marketplace where customers have come to expect next-day fulfillment. At the same time, the necessary skillsets to deliver on these operations are becoming hard to find, with a predicted truck driver shortage that could reach over 160,000 by 2030, if current trends continue. These challenges are compounded by increased competition from global vendors on omni-channel marketplaces as consumers look for bargains and fast shipping.

Speed, accuracy, and costs must be aligned to meet customer demand. That requires logistics solutions that can provide complete, multi-modal, global visibility to stay on top of capacity uncertainty, as well as rate fluctuations and volatility. Organizations must be able to leverage WMS tools and processes to think—and see—beyond the four walls of their warehouse operations in order to improve performance. Warehouses and logistics centers can no longer operate in the silos that prevent end-to-end optimization, but they must be integrated into the supply chain network for enhanced inventory visibility. By seeing what’s available at factory to ship, what’s in-transit, and what’s at the DC to run scenarios to best align supply with demand ensures that shelves remain stocked and orders are fulfilled efficiently and cost-effectively. If managing these logistics seems out of reach, look to a software partner like Datix. With 25 years of experience, we have supported thousands of software solutions by using a business-first approach with each of our clients to maximize their competitive advantage. When you work with Datix, we take the time to understand every aspect of your business so we can provide you with a tailored solution.

Forecasting and demand planning

Keeping up with forecasting and demand planning challenges requires agile solutions that can anticipate and prepare for seasonality issues, promotions, stockouts, and more. These efforts can no longer be managed with manual, disparate processes. Advancements in periodic item forecasting and intelligent baseline forecasting have helped to reduce the manual planning effort and smooth the impact of one-off events and sporadic demand. Meanwhile, periodic item forecasting provides a direct benefit to the user by factoring seasonal changes to decrease planning time and provide more precise statistical forecasts.

Particularly with a secure, cloud-based solution, users from every point along a supply chain can digitally share and align on plans, forecasts, and orders to obtain early warnings of potential issues and help to assure supply. This can also improve logistics throughput, beginning at origin, with solutions that automate supplier packing, labeling, and shipping processes. That way users can generate advance shipping notices to streamline receiving at distribution centers and warehouses to ensure packing and labeling accuracy to enable direct ship and cross-dock programs.

Communicating with the entire supply chain

Modern supply chain systems are built with the understanding that they will need to connect and integrate with other systems. Legacy systems and manual processes simply cannot deliver when it comes to communicating data. A supply chain solution that provides this full integration across systems and partners can create the new foundational visibility and end-to-end optimization necessary to thrive in a modern, digitally enabled marketplace. For those who need to integrate their ERP software, talk to a consultant like Datix. We designed our integration application, Unity, specifically for manufacturers who need support gaining a 365-degree view of their data from a single, trusted platform. Learn more about how Unity transforms businesses.

Wrap Up

Utilizing digitization with your ERP doesn’t need to be intimidating. When you have the right software solution for your organization, it becomes simple to align your software and your business processes for data transparency, warehouse management and more.

Read the Six Steps to Becoming a Data-Driven Organization

About Datix

With 25 years of experience, Datix knows how to bring out the best in your ERP solutions. Our team will connect with yours to understand your business and offer you a tailored solution for achieving your goals. We support you every step of the way from planning to implementation and beyond.

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Please note: This blog post was based on the White Paper “Why supply chain digitization is no longer optional” from Infor and updated by Datix to reflect 2023 market conditions