Consolidate your data and use advanced techniques to gain a 360-degree view of the entire value chain.
What happens when your supply chain grows faster than your capabilities to control it? For many manufacturers, that’s the reality. As they juggle multiple tiers of suppliers—each with its own systems, goals, and bottlenecks—visibility starts to vanish. Add the chaos of digital transformation, and the ecosystem becomes a maze of technologies, data streams, and disconnected priorities.
As operations become more distributed and specialized, comprehensive visibility across the entire value chain becomes vital to identify and respond to potential disruptions proactively.
Integrated analytics for manufacturing gives you an edge through a 24/7, 360-degree view.
Here’s what you should know to stay ahead.
Challenges in Achieving Supply Chain Visibility
A significant obstacle to supply chain visibility in the manufacturing industry is data silos. The specialized systems used for enterprise resource planning (ERP), procurement, production management, and logistics capture valuable data and work well individually. However, that information remains trapped in isolated repositories without integration, preventing comprehensive visibility. The issue compounds where systems store data in different formats, leading to inconsistencies and errors during aggregation.
Many traditional supply chain systems operate on batch processing models, which introduce significant latency between events in the supply chain and the organization’s awareness of them. Therefore, this hinders timely decision-making.
The lack of advanced predictive capabilities also leaves many manufacturers vulnerable to disruptions that could have been foreseen. These can be due to supplier capacity constraints, weather events, port congestion, transportation issues, or other external events. Manufacturers cannot effectively track all these potential disruption sources without sophisticated predictive capabilities.
How Integrated Analytics Enhances Supply Chain Visibility
The foundation of supply chain visibility lies in breaking down existing data silos. This requires consolidating information from ERP systems, manufacturing execution systems, transportation management platforms, supplier portals, and other sources to create a single source of truth.
Integrated analytics platforms allow you to extract data from all your sources, transform it into compatible formats, and load it into unified data repositories that enable comprehensive analysis. The result is a transparent, end-to-end data pipeline that gives you real-time access, seamless processing, and powerful analytics across the supply chain. So now, you can leverage advanced machine-learning techniques and statistical algorithms to move beyond knowing what has happened to understanding what will happen and addressing it before it impacts operations.
Key Benefits of Integrated Analytics for Supply Chains
1. Increased Agility and Faster Decision-Making During Disruptions
A significant benefit of data-driven analytics is enhanced agility. With comprehensive visibility and early warning capabilities, you can identify issues quickly and implement effective responses before disruptions cascade through the supply chain.
As KPMG puts it:
“Whether navigating natural disasters, geopolitical flareups, or the latest regulation, having end-to-end visibility equips you to make better and timely decisions throughout your supply chain.”
With integrated analytics…
“You will be prepared to take corrective actions, like moving quickly to identify potential risks to the flow of materials.”
2. Improved Supplier Performance Tracking and Accountability
Integrated analytics provides visibility to your tier-one suppliers and the extended supply network. You can track key performance metrics in real time, identify improvement opportunities, and hold partners accountable.
These capabilities create a foundation for more collaborative supplier relationships based on shared data and mutual objectives. Rather than retrospective reviews of past performance, you can engage your suppliers in forward-looking discussions about improvement opportunities, capacity plans, and risk mitigation strategies to develop more resilience.
3. Enhanced Cost Savings Through Smarter Procurement and Logistics
You can also drive considerable cost savings across the supply chain. In procurement, for instance, integrated analytics allows more strategic sourcing decisions based on comprehensive supplier performance data, market intelligence, and demand forecasts. You can consolidate purchases to leverage volume discounts, optimize order timing to capture favorable prices, and balance cost with risk considerations in supplier selection. In logistics, integrated analytics can help you optimize transportation planning, warehouse operations, and inventory placement to reduce operation costs.
Case Study: Intel Transforms Supply Chain With Real-Time Analytics
Facing challenges with their legacy batch-oriented systems, Intel embarked on an initiative to create a data platform with end-to-end visibility across their complex supply chain. The solution integrates the SAP HANA database with Cloudera Distribution of Hadoop, running on four-socket servers based on the Intel® Xeon® processor E7 family.
It delivers several key capabilities, including:
- Simple supply chain data pipelines that eliminate the need to reconcile information across multiple systems.
- Self-service analysis empowers planners to make faster and better decisions without depending on IT support.
- Enhanced data quality and a single authoritative source for supply chain information.
- Real-time analytics to help teams identify, diagnose, and address issues throughout the supply network.
According to Intel, reports that previously took hours to generate are now created instantly, enabling more responsive decision-making and issue resolution. The chip manufacturing giant further estimates the integrated data platform will drive more than $208 million in ROI and reduce IT support labor hours by 45%.
Intel’s transformation demonstrates that integrated analytics enhance supply chain visibility and deliver substantial operational improvements and financial returns.
Let NRI Help You Harness The Power of Integrated Analytics
As supply chains become more complex, integrated analytics is essential for maintaining operational resilience. Manufacturers that develop these capabilities will optimize operations more consistently, reduce costs, enhance decision-making, navigate disruptions more effectively, and outperform their less analytically mature competitors. So, take the proactive step to future-proof your business as you always have. Integrate analytics for supply chain visibility.
Not sure where to start? NRI has the tools and expertise to help you establish data-driven supply chain management. Let’s talk! Schedule a free custom consultation to learn how we can help you evolve your capabilities and become more resilient than ever.
