Dashboards are not new. They usually provide visualizations of measurements of performance of all kinds – Cycle Time, Service Levels, Profitability, etc. But the way they are used in managing a supply chain has always been “indirect”.
What I mean is that there are Planners in the organization that develop supply plans, then there are executors – suppliers, owned Plants and Distributors – who execute those plans and then there are things that go wrong (all the time).
When KPI’s are well chosen and well structured in dashboards, the hope is that when “things go wrong”, when the performance of the supply chain is off track, you will detect that problem through your KPI’s.
But do you see the relationship? People do their work throughout the operation and then that performance emerges through KPI’s.
And then, those who are observing those KPI’s go talk to the people who are doing the work and discuss the problem – what’s causing the readings, how wide or narrow is the impact and so on.
The form that observers of the supply chain and performers in the supply chain take, vary from one organization to another. What is common, though, is the “and then”. Performance and behaviour is here; then it’s observed through KPI’s; then there is intervention; and then you look at the KPI’s and hopefully you’re getting better results.
In recent times, I’ve witnessed technology – both with Kinaxis and with SAP’s S/4HANA – that changes this relationship between observing and acting. And this is where I stop calling them dashboards; I call them Panoramas.
Panoramas are like Dashboards but they are not disconnected from action. When the signal of a problem emerges in a Panorama, the underlining system measures the impact of the situation and presents you, the user, with possible scenarios for intervention. Once you analyze those scenarios and you decide which one you want, you trigger that same system to make adjustments in supply and operational plans to accommodate the disruption.
Between the Panorama and the automated actions mentioned, there is AI. It is AI that is behind the scenarios proposed against a detected disruption and it is AI that guides software to make adjustments to supply plans.
Panorama is where you begin and you trigger action from there. You can manage a Supply Chain from within the Panorama as opposed to outside of it.
It is this paradigm of Panoramas, which is very different from inert dashboards, that I find fascinating and exciting. It can increase the productivity of organizations by an order of magnitude. It can change the standard roles in the organization – for instance, instead of having demand planners, supply planners and buyers, one can have A to Z supply chain managers who oversee the supply chain from one end to the other – suppliers, Plants, Distribution and ultimately, Customer Service – for some of the Lines of Business of the enterprise.
I think that, as the technology matures and AI becomes more and more useful, the world of supply chain management will change enormously – it will be come simpler, contextual, broad-viewed and a lot more fun.
Múcua World 