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Benefit: When all of the transportation, logistics, and related service providers strive to achieve the same
standards of performance, there will be more consistency in the entire global supply chain.
Pitfalls: Without building consistency into a global supply chain’s framework, inefficiencies and duplication of
efforts can impede reliability, driving up costs and reducing services.
Benefit: When key global supply chain technology support systems and data are centralized, it becomes easy
to build certain metrics into the transportation management solution of choice. Weekly performance data, for
example, can be summed at a monthly level for a macro-level view and viewing several weeks (or months) at the
same time provides a view of future (or past) trends. This can be helpful in managing the buying, forecasting,
replenishment, demand planning, and production activities. Moreover, the aggregate of all demand and
supply data into a centralized data repository delivers appropriate views to all levels of decision makers within
an organization—allowing them to make critical decisions based on real-time demand.
Pitfalls: In addition to the higher costs of maintaining multiple systems to perform basically the same functions,
best practices which have been learned and managed for global supply chain management cannot be put into
effect until the entire organization has the same tools and methodologies. This situation also perpetuates the
existence of technology for longer than expected or desired.
Benefit: Centralized business rules improve cross-functional business decisions meant to streamline global
trade management initiatives while creating and fostering economies of scale.
Pitfalls: The key to global trade efficiency is the consistency and sustainable repetition of defined and centralized
business rules. When business rules are not centralized, costly inefficiencies and overlaps in business processes
contribute to a fragmented and error-prone global supply chain frameworkcan impede reliability, driving up
costs and reducing services.
4 Global Visibility
Overview: As the likes of manufacturing, distribution, technical and customer support move to regions of
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Best Practices for Global Supply Chains
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To better compete, senior management at the skateboard distributor determines that a new policy, or
business rule, should be put in place to address this issue. The rule becomes that all skateboards being
shipped to California and Arizona are now shipped via an air service to compete with the local competitors’
delivery times. After further analyses by marketing managers—who note that dealers will not pay for air
services—it is later determined that the margins with the skateboards are sufficient enough to allow the
dealers in California and Arizona to only be charged for the equivalent of the cost of ground. So the business
rule ultimately becomes: if the delivery state is California or Arizona, then automatically set the carrier to “Next
Day Air” but bill the Customer (dealer) for “Ground.”
This condition can also exist across the world. For example, if a UK facility is typically responsible for shipping
to customers in Germany—but the organization is without product to fulfill orders for Germany from its UK
Distribution center—the organization may need to fulfill the order from a different global facility but only
charge the freight as if the order shipped from the UK facility. This too is a real world scenario.
the world where they can prove to be more cost effective, one must also provide the information to support
these activities. This information needs to be available at the fingertips of those in these support roles. With this
requirement, global visibility can only be provided by interoperability among the execution systems. And the
interoperability must be real time to be effective at accomplishing visibility of any value. Old information is only
valuable to historians, analysts and auditors. To support the customer or trading partner, information must be
current... In addition to being timely; information needs to be presented to the person requiring this visibility
through one common interface.
Benefit: Companies achieving good visibility for their global supply chains can reduce lead times, inventory
levels, and carrying costs, while also gaining budgetary accuracy that’s significantly higher than that of the
average company. Global supply chain visibility platforms can also directly impact how successful a shipper
is—or is not—when it comes to centralizing trade compliance processes.
Pitfalls: Transparency across the global supply chain is becoming more and more important. Today’s global
transportation executives want and demand actionable visibility information. Therefore, companies not
working on improving the visibility of their cross-border supply chains tend to under-perform in comparison
to competitors, experience escalating inventory costs and suffer from unpredictable and erratic delivery
performance.
Remember these best practices when building your global supply chain and you will be sure to reap these and
other benefits, giving you a leg up on your competition and allowing you to stay competitive in today’s global
market.
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