Logistics and its systems - from TMS to MCN and AX4
The problem: an example among many
By chance does this situation seem familiar to you? I have some lines of production in my factory that are criticism in supply or are simply very expensive for me to give me the luxury to stop them. My analyst, Wilson, tells me that there is a risk of stopping due to lack of material. We will check it out on ERP and there is a purchase order generated and accepted by the supplier 15 days ago with arrival for today. It's to give it right and not stop my factory. But the risk is very high, I need to know if the cargo is on the road and I ask Wilson to check in his emails with the supplier (he does periodic follow-up with suppliers) what was the last update. After a few minutes he tells me, "3 days ago I was in the final operation before packing!" Wow, it doesn't use me. We decided to call the supplier and, after 3 attempts and 30 minutes waiting, we found that there was really a delay and the load is leaving today and will arrive here tomorrow. Now I must reprogram the factory with other products to try not to stop it. And hope that transportation occurs normally.
This story is a small sample of the daily life of most industries that, working in a disintegrated way from its supply chain, loses agility and accuracy on decision making, generating impacts on service and efficiency, which impairs costs and revenue, as well as generating huge stress in operations, wasting a lot of time to have elementary information.
Mcn, tms and the control tower with ax4
This type of problem has arisen the concept of multimeparis collaboration networks, or multi-retortis collaboration networks (MCN). According to Gartner, MCN are solutions that support a community partners of any level and type that need to coordinate and execute business processes that extend through multiple companies . Gartner considers cloud -based MCNs an essential technology to coordinate, orchestrate and automate the extended supply chain of an organization within the general business ecosystem in which they operate. The main features of MCN solutions include three layers: network representation and management, application functions, analysis and intelligence integration.
Siemens Digital Logistics (SDL) portfolio logistics software is an MCN, allowing the industry, its suppliers and transporters through workflows designed to automate and optimize logistics processes between different stakeholders. For example, you can define via system what are the necessary actions after your supplier's load revenue, what notification will occur and for those who, as well as define a flow of actions for exception cases, such as a loss or malfunction in a transport. Users are connected to the platform on their desktops, but also in their mobile applications, to facilitate transport updates by carriers.
In addition to these functions between companies, AX4 is a transport management software, also meeting the requirements of traditional transportation management software (TMS) which, according to Gartner, is a category of systems designed to manage increasing transport complexity levels in various modes of transport and geographical regions . Siemens's solution performs the inbound and outbound transport management functions, manages freight table, the flow of purchases and even the collaborative dock scheduling. But as the icing on the cake could not be missed, AX4 is still an integrated solution to the Opcenter APS, which allows any update in the forecast of a transport to be automatically reflected in the availability of materials on a factory programming made by PPCP. Here you will find a comparative article between AX4 software and TMS software.
In short, it enables a company logistics control tower and, by presenting the traditional execution of an TMS with collaboration in a MCN chain on a 100% cloud platform, AX4 becomes an extremely different logistics technology.
But what results can we expect?
When we talk about AX4, we are referring to a solution with over 20 years of experience, a base of over 600,000 users and more than 50,000 managed daily transport. Companies that adhere to a platform of this level have impacts on their status quo in many ways, such as:
Chain : Through the visibility and collaboration provided, which allow the workflow and information between the different stakeholders in the production chain to occur in an agile, unified and therefore reliable manner.
Cost Reduction: If information is available in advance (remember our history of the beginning), we avoid misuse of our assets, late payment, extra truck fees in the courtyard, because the loads are poorly organized, inconsistent freight costs with contracts, and so on;
Risk Mitigation : In a global environment today with such acute trends that they have gained a nickname, the so -called Vuca (translating from English, volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), being prepared for the most diverse situations that their production chain can undergo (wars, strikes, climate disasters, accidents, among others) is to mitigate risks that can generate unexpected stratospheric costs. After the problem, the medicine can be very expensive and bitter. Therefore, the ability of its operation to react agile and assertively through what technology can provide is crucial.
Digital Transformation: More than a jargon, it is a change in the way its operation works, eliminating extremely manual activities by turning mechanical work into analytical. Moreover, this movement causes a structural modification in the relationship between companies, from paving to the development of better partnerships between them to the cost reduction of various distinct systems interfaces based on the simplification of a unified system of common use. Finally, AX4 enables the company to be based on real (and bulky!) Data to improve its management, as we agree that the Wilson Analyst's entrance box or its spreadsheet does not turn the way we work with data.
Of course, not all these impacts are purposes, some are means. However, these means to reach where we want, very soon, will be imperative for those who want to remain competitive. Simply those who do not know and develop their operation well through the good use of data or not to adapt to new sustainability normatives will be out of the game. And since we know that in industry nothing happens overnight, it is good to take the opportunity to sleep thinking about it as soon as possible.
Need technical guidance to know what it would be like to implement this logistics technology in your industry? Talk to Neo and one of our specialized consultants will contact you to introduce you to the ways.