Join us as we kick off the annu­al ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Sup­ply Chain event vir­tu­al­ly! This ses­sion will exam­ine the role of a resilient sup­ply chain in respond­ing and recov­er­ing from unan­tic­i­pat­ed events by return­ing to its orig­i­nal state or mor­ph­ing into a state that is even bet­ter at prof­itably meet­ing the needs of customers. 

The ques­tion now becomes, what can com­pa­nies do about it? Can com­pa­nies absorb the incre­men­tal costs and invest­ments need­ed to cre­ate resilience from redun­dant sup­pli­ers, plants, and points of dis­tri­b­u­tion? What about de-glob­al­iz­ing and break­ing the sup­ply chain into small­er, more inde­pen­dent­ly oper­at­ing enti­ties? What about just solv­ing the prob­lem with more buffer inven­to­ry or safe­ty stock? 

While the above levers can at least in part make the sup­ply chain more resilient, they all involve trade-offs, cost, com­plex­i­ty, and can take time to imple­ment. Alter­na­tive­ly, there is one com­mon theme across ini­tia­tives that has allowed com­pa­nies to bet­ter respond to the shocks — and that is cen­tered around hav­ing the sup­ply chain be more ​“dig­i­tal­ized.” For exam­ple, com­pa­nies that have uni­fied the cross-func­tion­al plan­ning process­es into one com­mon envi­ron­ment are able to more quick­ly and more fre­quent­ly make plan­ning deci­sions and what-if analy­ses. Com­pa­nies that have invest­ed in their Indus­try 4.0 Indus­tri­al Inter­net-of-Things (IoT) plat­form are bet­ter able to run and main­tain their sup­ply chain sites and assets. Com­pa­nies that are con­nect­ed to dig­i­tal logis­tics net­works have bet­ter vis­i­bil­i­ty into what is hap­pen­ing and can make bet­ter decisions.