Plan your supply chain and production is an essential strategic action to maintain efficient operations and satisfy demand. As such, automation allows you to effortlessly respond to demand, identify, predict and mitigate risks, improve the efficiency of your operations and streamline your processes. Finally, you'll reduce operating costs without sacrificing quality.
In this article, we provide you with the 4 keys to this highly beneficial automation.
From your supply of raw materials to manufacturing and then to delivery, a careful planning will allow your production line to run as efficiently as possible. By implementing a four-pronged approach, covering supply, demand, production, sales, and operations, you will ensure that your entire supply chain is included in your strategy. It also allows you to distribute the different areas of intervention for manageable and thorough planning.
Predict the offer
The management of The adequacy between supply and demand allows your business to reach its financial goals and grow. If you are unable to manage the offer, on the contrary, you risk not honoring your orders, dissatisfied your customers, or even damaging your reputation.
By figuring out how to balance the supply of your products and the demand of your customers, you will be ready to keep your business running smoothly.
Automation makes this process easier by improving collaboration within your company and with your suppliers. Indeed, you can use automation applications to increase the visibility of your supply chain and get updates in real time. This helps you develop an accurate procurement plan that gives you the flexibility you need to meet flexible demand.
Anticipate demand
Ensuring that you are able to meet demand is, of course, essential for planning your production line. But this supply is useless if availability is low. By forecasting fluctuations in demand, you can therefore ensure that you have enough products or services in the right place to meet this demand efficiently and cost-effectively.
Automation makes forecasting easier by offering a easy access to historical sales data. If you are running manual processes, this data may simply not exist for you to assess. With automation, you can use this unified data from multiple channels to create accurate forecasting models, without having to manually enter large amounts of data from system to system. Automation can also help you speed up processes such as the selection and integration of new suppliers, which becomes crucial when your existing production lines fail or cannot deliver the volume you need.
Establishing your production plan
As an essential link in the chain, production requires careful planning to ensure the appropriate allocation of resources to eliminate inefficiency or waste. By setting production goals, determining the resources needed, and creating a production schedule, your business will be in a position to easily meet deadlines and service level agreements.
To do this, you can further improve your production plan by using automation to connect your control systems to your production plan. It's usually the gaps between systems and data silos that make it difficult to manage production. By connecting your systems, you can therefore keep up to date with any changes in production requirements and avoid bottlenecks.
Plan sales and operations
Effective management of the production chain is not temporary. It requires regular thought and updating to make sure your business operates to its maximum potential. Sales and operations planning involves to identify specific operational processes on a regular basis that can be put in place to enable procurement, improve distribution, and ensure that products always reach customers. You'll also want to protect your profitability and stay competitive. One way to do this is to adjust prices, which often requires multi-level analysis and approvals.
With automation, you'll have a single source of truth that you can use as a trusted source to inform that decision-making. Indeed, automation unifies your data and removes silos. It therefore produces more accurate forecasts, reports, analyses, and approvals. For price adjustments, you can create and automate processes to quickly review, adjust, and approve new pricing frameworks to ensure you keep up with changes in your market.
How can you make your production chain planning processes continuously evolve?
Each production line is specific, and planning must be adapted to the goals and needs of your business. Regardless of your industry, automation can make planning more accurate and efficient. You will have access to vital data and will be able to process your processes quickly.
About StoryShaper:
StoryShaper is an innovative start-up that supports its customers in defining their digital strategy and the development of automation solutions tailor-made.
Sources: StoryShaper, Bizagi
