Explore supply chain goals

Adapting your processes and operations as business conditions change—particularly across your supply chain— is critical to ensure your organization thrives and remains competitive.

Your organization will be able to react quicker and better manage disruptions

Adapting your processes and operations as business conditions change— particularly across your supply chain— is critical to ensure your organization thrives and remains competitive. By building a more resilient supply chain, you’ll not only help ensure business continuity but maximize your operational efficiency and profitability.

Your organization will be able to react quicker and better manage disruptions across logistics, facilities, manufacturing, development, and even corporate functions.

This guide explains key operational scenarios that will help you respond to rapid business changes—even in crises—through agile planning, distribution, and fulfilment. For each scenario, you’ll explore a short list of questions to understand your current situation, activities to plan for what’s next, and resources to get your started.

Enhance your supply chain visibility

Learn how to quickly resolve supply and demand imbalances as well as prioritize production and distribution based on the disruption.

Questions to consider Recommended activities
1. How much visibility do you have into your logistics, inventory, and factory operations at any given moment? View your entire supply chain and predict both upstream and downstream impact due to supply chain disruptions.
2. How do you determine customer demand? Improve demand planning by viewing sales and marketing activities in real time to better align your teams.
3. Do you have visibility across your sites on inventory to commit to delivery dates to your customer? Get real-time insights into product location and stock levels for both internal and external consumption.

Build agile planning and distribution processes

Consistently deliver products on time with real-time planning that ensures the right resources get to the right place at the right time.

Questions to Consider Recommended activities
1.How has the pandemic disrupted your supply chain and how are you mitigating it to maintain business continuity? Ensure business continuity by optimizing your sourcing and fulfillment strategy with a sophisticated qualification process.
2. How do you ensure that you have the right inventory at the right place at the right time? Consistently deliver products on time through a connected factory and real-time supply and production planning
3. How do you avoid overstock and stock-outs? Improve merchandise planning by ensuring you stock the right product at
the right time in the right quantity.
4. How do you achieve on-time delivery at lower fulfillment costs? Reduce cost of demand fulfillment through more intelligent order management and agile product fulfillment options

Increase uptime for your assets

Reduce costly equipment failure and unpredicted shutdowns through predictive maintenance—applying enhanced resource scheduling, IoT, and mixed reality.

Questions to consider Recommended activities
1. How do you currently maintain your equipment across all your sites? What is the revenue impact if lines go down? Reduce costly downtime by reducing errors in production and extend asset longevity through predictive maintenance
2. What is your cost-savings strategy to keep your CAPEX down? Does increasing asset longevity align with your strategy? Reduce store operations costs while reinvigorating the role that the store sales environment plays.

Build resilience with an agile supply chain

It’s more important than ever to not only strengthen the resilience of your people and teams, but your entire operations. By following the activities outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to assess your situation and move forward with a plan to respond, recover, and reimagine your supply chain in the face of change.

Find the help you need to start this journey with end-to-end Microsoft solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Commerce, that are built on a foundation of security and privacy. Get up and running with little-to-no customization so you’ll quickly be able to:

• Adapt to disruptions successfully.
• Ensure business continuity during distress.
• Make data-driven decisions confidently in a crisis.

Get assistance in building a resilient supply chain or assessing your organization by reaching out to an ETG specialist.