What is a Control Tower for Supply Chains?
A control tower for supply chains is a central hub with the required technology, organization and processes to capture and use transportation data to provide enhanced visibility for short- and long-term decision-making aligned with strategic objectives. When you add optimization functionality to a control tower, better decisions and improved efficiency and/or service are within reach.
Why optimize the supply chain with a Control Tower?
Control towers in general support the following essential needs for managing supply chains:
Motives for using a control tower vary among companies and industries, e.g.:
How do you optimize the supply chain with a Control Tower?
In transportation, a control tower can solve these needs for visibility and collaboration at different levels of control. The main application areas for control tower solutions are at level 3, 4 or 5 of the levels listed below.
By adding optimization there are various opportunities, e.g.: to construct better centralized plans in advance - to re-optimize and reschedule the plan during execution, e.g., by presenting proposals for the best alternatives or to continuously recompute the ETA - to respect all dependencies and restrictions during any scheduling calculations, supporting all complex logistic concepts What are the results of optimizing a supply chain by using a Control Tower? The main benefits of optimizing a supply chain by using a control tower, are: - Centralized data and optimization functions - Real-time visibility, transparency and overview - Generated dynamic optimization power Thanks to the Control Tower with optimization capabilities, companies can achieve: - An increase in required deliveries without the vehicle requirement increasing accordingly - Better insight into creating pick stage plans which greatly increase the accuracy and floor utilization - Better route build and trailer utilization - Reduction in km/mileage travelled - Reduction in fuel costs and CO2 emissions, - Improved communication and management overview - Impressive cost savings within a short period Why contact ORTEC to create or optimize a Control Tower? ORTEC has created a transportation control tower to both visualize supply chains from end-to-end and optimize all aspects of transportation. This enables centralized planning and dispatch for all kinds of transportation concepts, but also decentralized visibility and transparency, for example for customers, suppliers and management. This is supported by portals or apps, with real-time information like the current estimated time of arrival. In this way the customer and the supplier can optimize their sections of the supply chain, based on the latest insights. The ORTEC Control Tower solution is implemented at consumer goods companies, retailers and logistics service providers. ORTEC has explored this knowledge in webinars and white papers and at round table events.