No matter how well-managed its storerooms, no matter how diligent its procurement team, no matter how comprehensive its data, manufacturing companies still run the risk of having inefficiencies, unnecessary costs, and ineffective inventory control. When processes are unconnected, each function focuses on its own sphere – reducing cost per piece, reducing inventory, making short-term production quotas, etc. Department heads are typically unaware of how their processes will affect other areas of the company.
Supply Chain Disintegration
Supply chain function disintegration can easily lead to the entire organization falling apart. Production, sales, promotion, and logistical data that are scattered throughout the organization can give leaders disparate versions of the company’s performance and market position, often leading to poor and misinformed decision making. Incomplete records, imprecise taxonomies, and lenient crib policies make assigning cost drivers difficult, leading to:
- Backlogs in accounts payable
- Unhappy suppliers
- Strategic blind spots
Unless companies break through the silo mentality and adopt sustainable MRO digital supply chain integration strategies, the indirect supply chain will continue to waste money and resources. Supply chain integration converts these individual efforts into a streamlined, interconnected workflow, making data consistent and available, and correctly assigning cost drivers.
Putting It All Together
Digital supply chain integration, on the other hand, has the ability to benefit the company far beyond saving money on supplies and shortening the monthly and year-end general ledger close. A proper MRO supply chain integration strategy delivers precise, actionable information to all areas of the company. This information can be used to transform:
- Purchasing
- Supplier relations
- Warehouse operations
- Maintenance key contributors
This transformation allows your firm to make sound, strategic decisions. Integrated digital supply chains are responsive, intuitive, powerful platforms that consolidate value-added functions to allow greater control and flexibility among processes and applications.
An MRO integration project leverages departmental cost reductions, inventory optimizations, and key production component inventory reliability by automating routine processes. This eliminates the possibility of human error, input mistakes, and silo-based agendas.
SDI’s Solution
SDI’s answer to MRO integrated supply is ZEUS, a suite of components that addresses every aspect of the supply chain, from data management through the entire source-to-pay process, and connects it with other critical business functions. Fully scalable and compatible with SAP and all leading enterprise resource management software, SDI’s digital supply chain solution ensures the availability of critical parts and minimizes the risk of overstock – all while right-sizing your inventory. It allows managers to establish and enforce procurement rules to prevent rogue and off-contract purchases. It reduces the need for manual intervention while automating various processes and creating reports and data transparency – which translates to more efficient maintenance schedules, supplier consolidation, and other productivity and cost saving advantages.
- Spend Analytics – Unlike last-generation electronic data interchange technology, SDI’s MRO data analytics module ZEUS monitors a centralized data warehouse and decision engine. Ensuring clean, current, consistently labeled data. The software responds when the artificial intelligence engine triggers a purchase or other decision, the software then collects and formats changes to the master data file and distributes it throughout the enterprise. Transactions are recorded and tabulated in close to real time and used to inform future decisions. With this consistent visibility across inventories, ZEUS arms company managers with data they can access with a few keystrokes.
- Inventory Management Technology – Optimal inventory levels for each class of SKU is assured with the ZEUS Inventory Management module, our supply chain integration program’s inventory management component. ZEUS takes the guesswork out of supplier vetting, ordering, tracking, and paying for MRO materials. Predictive and proactive, the platform uses 32 sophisticated algorithms to compare inventory levels, delivery lead times, demand forecasts, and other key variables to anticipate, schedule, and place orders. Replenishment not only is automatic, it is also more precise. The decision engine keeps transportation costs low by evaluating delivery terms, opportunities for full loads, etc. Total costs are minimized while service levels rise.
ZEUS also acts as an interpreter of all this data and a conduit to your CMMS, SAP, or other ERP system. ZEUS provides the flexibility that the two powerful applications need to communicate with each other and ensures all enterprise data is visible, useable, portable and available to automated processes throughout the company. No more duplication of efforts or manually intervening to reformat data from one operation, for use in another.
To put SDI ZEUS’s robust suite of MRO supply chain integration solutions to work for you, contact our sales team. They can show you how integration can connect your ERM components, empower data-driven decisions, and streamline your workflow.
