Remember the old arcade game of Whac-a-Mole where you would hit a mole back into its hole and then another one would pop up somewhere else? Lots of times in seems like optimizing a supply chain is like playing that game. You eliminate one problem, streamline a process, improve a KPI and then some other issue pops up, sometimes as a reaction to the improvements you just made.
As outsourcing, global markets and multiple channels to market make supply chains even more complex due, there are now even more places the mole can pop its head up. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to correlate the reactions to actions supply chain professionals use to optimize their operations. What’s needed is real time, end-to-end visibility into the supply chain. Only then, can organizations correlate all events with impacted processes and appropriately automate responses. This is only way to keep the mole’s head from popping up upstream or downstream. The emergence of Supply Chain Control Towers that leverage real-time information to make decision in the now is finally giving supply chain professionals this capability.