From just in time to act in time - how proactive business intelligence can fix the supply chain

2022 was supposed to be the year the supply chain got back on track, then Omicron happened, and the problems we face in the supply chain continue to this day. And more issues are racking up daily.

From computer chip shortages that began back in 2020 to port closures to workforce availability, as the world’s manufacturer, even the slightest blip in Asia’s production, transportation and distribution is having a tsunami-size impact on the world’s economy.

The challenges in the supply chain are not merely myriad. They have been years in the making, and they are not going to be fixed tomorrow. However, that does not mean chief supply chain officers and procurement and logistics teams should just sit on their hands.

Instead of being on the “defence” and continuing to rely on siloed and legacy technology like many have done for decades, perhaps it’s time to get on the “offence” to embrace an end-to-end analytics data pipeline that gives them the active intelligence they need to take action in real-time.

What is Active Intelligence and why it matters to the supply chain 

While all companies have some amount of visibility, it is not unusual for there to be a lag of over a week—considered typical. Companies today need to see even further, with daily or even up-to-the-minute visibility, to give them a handle on better risk management and alternative sourcing arrangements. 

Just seeing problems coming is not enough. Companies need the agility to understand the implications and, more importantly, the ability to act in a timely manner.

This is particularly important when supply chain issues that crop up at a moment’s notice introduce backlogs that cause not only ships and planes to be stuck on shores and tarmacs respectively, but a rippling effect that impacts warehouses, labour, and elsewhere.

We saw this when China shut down Ningbo port, one of its busiest ports (and the world’s third largest container port), in January 2022 due to blocked roads and Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. 

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The repercussions are real, and the impact is devastating, even for companies like Apple, which reported the company lost US$6 billion in Q3 2021 sales because it could not keep up with customer demand due to supply chain issues. 

So, why Active Intelligence? For too long, the technology space has been covered by brands talking about optimising for real-time decisioning, but what organisations fail to notice is many solutions in the market are based on passive platforms and tools. Open a dashboard, get presented with an analysis based on historical data sets. 

But the future requires companies to act on shorter time horizons. Data sets from the last five years are not able to address critical business moments, given the constant state of disruption -particularly since the outbreak - in the supply chain. 

Active Intelligence is really about giving stakeholders in the supply chain ecosystem--from manufacturing to procurement to logistics and freight forwarding--the proactive tools they need as well as the headroom to improve collaboration, so that they can better anticipate inventory requirements, and be proactively alerted to any unexpected events for rapid response. 

Addressing consumer taste

Founded in 2010, Hyakunousha International Limited operates a chain of more than 100 grab-and-go stores in Hong Kong, selling thousands of omusubi (Japanese rice balls) under its hana-musubi brand. 

Featuring 20 varieties of omusubi, along with food and beverages, hana-musubi’s greatest challenge is getting timely sales data from all stores to plan its operations, and matching supply to sales, given that these rice balls are made fresh every day and have a very short shelf life. Layering this complexity is the constantly changing tastes of consumers. 

Hyuakunousha needed an easy-to-use solution that provides staff with insights that they could easily understand, in anticipation of empowering staff to use data and data analysis to support the organisation’s planning and strategy development. 

In adopting our Active Intelligence solution, Hyakunousha gained the scalability that Qlik Sense in the cloud offered, which aligned with the brand’s growth strategy. Daily, thousands of transaction data are downloaded from the Point of Sale system (PoS) across more than 100 stores, giving Hyakunousha unprecedented access to accurate and timely information, while preventing in-store shortages and waste. 

Supply chain departments already have access to large amounts of data, but these are not currently guiding the decisions of supply chain professionals. To perform the best analysis and solve the layered complexity amidst the many persistent issues that plague the sector, there is no better time to break down the silos by embracing a trusted end-to-end data analytics platform. Ultimately, to better optimise forecasting and planning and streamline fulfillment and warehousing, it’s imperative the supply chain ecosystem woke up to Active Intelligence so that they can take action in the moment.

The writer is senior director, solutions & value engineering, at Qlik.