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 gave rise to the concept of Multi-enterprise Collaboration Networks (MCNs). According to Gartner, MCNs are solutions that support a community of business partners of any level and type who need to coordinate and execute business processes that span multiple company company 's extended supply chain within the overall business ecosystem in which they operate. The main features of MCN solutions include three layers: network representation and management, application functions, and integration, analytics, and intelligence.
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.
Beyond these inter- company , AX4 is a transportation management software, also meeting the requirements of a traditional TMS (Transportation Management System) which, according to Gartner, is a category of systems designed to manage increasing levels of transportation complexity across various modes of transport and geographic regions . The Siemens solution performs inbound and outbound transportation management functions, manages freight tables, purchasing flow, and even collaborative dock scheduling. But, as the icing on the cake, AX4 is also integrated with Opcenter APS, allowing any update to a transport forecast to be automatically reflected in the availability of materials in a factory schedule created by PPC . Here you can find a comparative article between AX4 software and TMS software.
In summary, it enables a company 's Logistics Control Tower and, by presenting the traditional execution of a TMS with the collaboration in the supply chain of an MCN on a 100% cloud platform, AX4 becomes an extremely differentiated logistics technology.
But what results can we expect?
When we talk about AX4, we're referring to a solution with over 20 years of experience, a user base of over 600,000, and more than 50,000 daily managed transport operations. company that adopt a platform of this caliber experience significant impacts on their status quo in various aspects, 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 just jargon, it's a change in how your operation works, eliminating highly manual activities and transforming mechanical work into analytical work. Furthermore, this movement causes a structural change in the relationship between company , from paving the way for better partnerships to reducing the costs of various interfaces between different systems based on the simplification of a unified, commonly used system. Finally, AX4 enables the company to rely on real (and voluminous!) data to improve its management, because let's face it, analyst Wilson's inbox or his spreadsheet doesn't transform 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.