The consumer packaged goods industry is highly competitive, with manufacturers racing to gain retail shelf space for the newest products on the market. To lead in the competitive landscape, or at least keep up, companies must constantly look for new ways to get products to market faster and to respond quickly to competitor actions. In addition, manufacturing supply chains reach far beyond the boundaries of a single company's plant floor operation, organization, and geography. They operate globally, beginning with suppliers and extending to business partners that include transportation firms, outsource manufacturers, sales channels, and customers. Global manufacturing companies are already leveraging the Microsoft environment to empower people to solve business problems, effectively and optimally orchestrating their supply chains. Their experience demonstrates the positive impact of the Microsoft environment on supply chain performance, collaboration, planning, and execution.
For consumer goods manufacturers, the key to profitable growth is to evolve the enterprise into a demand-driven supply network, switching from a "push" method of moving product, which is based on incomplete or inaccurate demand information, to a "pull" method, which is based on quick response to real-time demand signals.
Supply chain management solutions from Microsoft and our extensive partner network address the realities of today's complex global supply chains. They provide a foundation for people to transform and improve their supply chains, moving them into more demand-driven models.
Business Challenges
Manufacturers face the challenge of keeping up with consumer demand and taking the lead in a competitive market while maintaining reasonable inventory costs throughout the supply chain. Overcompensation for consumer demand leads to excess inventory, which means wasted goods, warehouse space, and transportation planning. Undercompensation means empty shelves and lost confidence with retailers that could impact future shelf space.
Given the nature of a down economy, continued cost reduction and constant improvements in operational efficiency are paramount. Finding solutions to address these needs is an important part of any manufacturer's ongoing efforts to better manage supply chains, improve operations, and differentiate itself from competitors.
Solutions
For manufacturers ready to transition to a demand-driven supply network (DDSN) model, the next step is to find the right solution. Microsoft is committed to helping consumer goods companies find solutions that are cost-effective and yield the greatest impact to supply chain collaboration.
Supply chain management solutions using the Microsoft platform and offerings from our extensive partner ecosystem give your people the ability to transform and improve supply chains. Built on a foundation of Microsoft collaboration, business intelligence, and integration technology, these solutions make supply chains more demand-driven, adaptive, responsive, and efficient.
DDSN solutions built by Microsoft partners respond to the unique challenges of consumer goods companies with:
Demand planning to optimize unit production at near real time.
Warehouse management to track inventory and support the customer base.
Transportation management to streamline the logistics of moving inventory.
By delivering software that is familiar, easy to use, and easy to connect to and integrate with other technologies across the entire supply chain, Microsoft empowers people in consumer goods enterprises.
| Solutions | Benefits |
|---|
Supply chain visibilityMonitoring, performance management, analytics, regulatory compliance, and comprehensive scorecards across the extended supply chain and heterogeneous underlying IT systems | Effectively integrate the extended supply chainCreate a connected, visible, and actionable supply chain with composite, transactional views, including manufacturing, distribution, supplier, customer, and third-party logistics business processes. Use scorecards across the extended supply chainEasily create and manage supply chain scorecards to enable people to identify and prioritize areas for improvement using integrated business intelligence and key performance indicators delivered by a user-friendly portal. Boost business performanceDrive bottom- and top-line supply chain performance improvements, maintain competitiveness, and improve people's agility and responsiveness. Improve customer satisfactionUse supply chain performance improvements and real-time visibility into processes-including inventory, orders, and capacity-to boost customer service and customer satisfaction levels. |
Supply chain collaborationFlexible business-to-business and application integration, communication, and collaborative process workflows with all supply chain partners | Improve collaborationJoin both structured and unstructured collaboration under a single architecture to promote deeper levels of interaction across all supply chain partners. |
Supply chain planningDemand management and sales and operations planning business processes, delivered with an integrated business intelligence and collaboration framework | Facilitate proactive, real-time supply chain planningUse monitoring, alerts, live communication, and event management to encourage continual performance improvement. |
Supply chain executionLogistics, warehouse and transportation management, and supply chain execution solutions-including radio frequency identification (RFID) enablement-that capitalize on common integration across systems to improve your people's visibility into the supply chain and the efficiency of their performance | Take advantage of existing supply chain management assetsAdopt a flexible supply chain platform that uses your existing IT infrastructure. Take advantage of common user environmentsEnable supply chain practitioners to analyze, collaborate, plan, and manage current issues within a familiar user environment. |
