The supply chain seen from your control tower

By means of a control tower (a tool that acts as a centralized repository) it is possible to organize the processing of data extraction from the different participants that are involved in the supply chain. In addition, the control tower provides real-time visibility of the operations that are being developed by the different participants in the logistics chain. Together with Artificial Intelligence applications, it is possible to advance towards an autonomous system that helps in decision-making.

Companies that have logistics towers implemented, operate in a faster and smarter way in achieving their aims, and of course, they achieve better experience for their customers.

In the market we can find different types of logistics and transport control towers, which offer a multitude of advantages from the complete vision of the transport processes (a link here) to the management of logistics picking. Transport control towers are software that has the most advanced technology to provide rapid integration with all types of information sources or systems. They also usually have control panels or management dashboards with updated information in real time, complemented with historical analysis, essential for decision-making.

There is often confusion between a control tower and a fleet management tool; the control tower has a different objective. For this, the focus is on achieving complete and transversal visibility of the entire supply chain (raw material suppliers, transporter, warehouses, distributors, etc.). In addition, this visibility must be in a real-time, since the control tower allows to be able to make automatic decisions that increase productivity and work autonomously, such as placing raw material purchase orders based on the supplier, sales etc.

There are some guidelines that must be taken into consideration if you want to implement a logistics control tower in the company, so that the tool can offer its full potential:

• Importance of transport: the visibility of the supply chain (here the other link) must be complete, but it is necessary to have greater control over transport. In some activities a greater flow of information is needed. The logistics control tower, thanks to the immediate exchange of standardized information with a wide catalog of suppliers and logistics traceability systems, allow an integrated and multimodal control of all shipments at the same point.

• Ease of use: it is logical, functionality is a very important point. The logistics control tower must have state-of-the-art visualization tools that improve the user experience by facilitating the presentation and understanding of logistics information for greater traceability.

• Shipment tracking: it allows you to control the agreed service level, know the status of the shipment and the moment when the merchandise is received by your customers and thus be able to anticipate problems and claims.

• Alerts: the ability to schedule early alerts and management exceptions, allowing you to focus on the problem before it even occurs.

• Indicators: service indicators allow compare offered service between different providers. These indicators are the means of obtaining an improvement in the inefficiencies of the logistics chain.

• Audits: the logistics control tower must have the availability to generate quality reports, compliance, billing or any other aspect that is considered essential in the service. All this must be easily visualized graphically and intuitively in dashboards.

To sum up, a logistics control tower has to conform to what its name says, a “common” place where you can have complete visibility of the supply chain, and that also allows the company a faster and more autonomous management through artificial intelligence. This will provide higher quality to the service offered to the customer, cost reduction that can be obtained through the data provided in the dashboards, which allow generating strategies for cross-cutting global transport planning.