Software solutions that extend the view of a company’s operation for supply chain planning, supply chain execution, and related functions, control tower solutions help centralize data and visibility. Once in place, control towers help companies improve efficiency, save money, collaborate with business partners, and coordinate activities across their end-to-end supply chains.
With 2020 still visible in their rearview mirrors and now focused on the pending post-COVID recovery, companies are more closely examining what went wrong during the early stages of the pandemic and working to close those gaps before the next disruption emerges.
For many, the focus is now on gaining higher levels of supply chain visibility, or, the tracking of in-transit parts, components, or products from the point of manufacture to their final destination. Armed with high levels of visibility, companies can improve and strengthen their supply chains by making data readily available to all stakeholders (including the customer).
“Until recently, supply chain control towers have been all about providing visibility to your immediate trading partners,” digital supply chain consultant Jenis Sheth writes in Supply Chain Game Changer™. “But with the development of multi-party, consumer-driven networks, advanced control towers now provide real-time visibility, collaboration, and powerful artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to move beyond decision-support to decision-making and autonomous control.”
Enabling Strategic Priorities and Solving Problems
According to Deloitte, a control tower is a dynamic end-to-end capability that enables strategic priorities, solves specific business issues, and delivers measurable benefits by implementing three interwoven components:
Control towers also help companies accelerate speed to market, manage margins, increase cost controls, improve asset utilization (including inventory), reduce lead times, and enhance risk mitigation. By “connecting the dots” across different data types and offering a near-real-time view of all supply chain activities, control towers serve as key competitive differentiators for the companies that are using them.
“The more a solution connects this disparate information into a single view – converging both planning and execution, as well as all order and flow types – and enables in-app actionability,” Deloitte writes, “the greater a business’ ability to drive process improvement, cost reductions, and on-time and in-full (OTIF) delivery.”
Not all control towers are the same. Some offer a broader scope of functionalities while others provide higher levels of supply chain visibility. In Why Your Supply Chain Needs a Control Tower for Navigating Uncertainty, BCG’s Justin Ahmad walks companies through the key elements of an effective control tower and highlights these six foundational elements to look for:
When selecting your control tower, look for a solution that provides end-to-end visibility across all supply chain partners (e.g., suppliers, contract manufacturers, transportation carriers, third-party logistics providers); real-time tracking through collaborative information sharing; early warning alerts and exception management; and predictive and prescriptive decision support.
Calling the control tower an “exciting capability that should be part of everyone’s supply chain strategy,” Sheth points to changing business demands and advancements in technology as the two key reasons all companies should be exploring and investing in control towers. “With a control tower enabled by full visibility across the entire supply chain, there is an opportunity for more efficient management and decision making than ever before.”