Boost Supply Chain Resilience Through Microsoft Cloud

Covid 19 posed unforeseen challenges and disruptions in the supply chain for manufacturing companies. The adaptability to tackle those challenges in production and distributions came into the spotlight during the said period of complexities.

The manufacturers are now focused on building systems that could help them prevent and minimize supply chain disruptions to achieve sustainable growth. In the current era, according to a survey, almost 90 percent of supply chain professionals are planning to invest in making their supply chains more resilient.  The key to making supply chain adaptive and resilient is two major fronts:

Recipe for creating a more resilient supply chain

• Planning and optimization. The minimum you should aim to achieve from is to increase service level efficiency and reduce cost.
• Visibility. For minimizing risk and capitalizing on future opportunities, use supply and demand signals.

Even though there are still some prominent supply chain lags like shipment delays with lead times twice as usual, most of the manufacturers are positive about the future opportunities.

In response to the shipment delays and other common challenge, manufacturers are focused on streamlining their processes that could bring scalability in their businesses and a lean supply chain.

Microsoft solutions and capabilities could help manufacturers in this regard in many ways:

• Access to necessary data. The biggest nightmare for a manufacturer is to have stockouts or excessively stocking goods than needed. By digitalizing the manufacturing process through Microsoft, you get access to real time data and a unified platform from many sources that helps in real time decision making and accurate forecasting. Thus, it results in a more streamlined supply chain.
• Increased collaboration and trust. Through Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain insights manufacturers could predict supply shortages by maintaining the vendor data in the vendor collaborative portal. The Microsoft capabilities helps in determining and breaking down siloes.
• Predicting disruptions independently. Microsoft capabilities allows the manufacturers to create a digital twin of their supply chain with complete model scenarios and simulations, that helps in predicting problems. Manufacturers can automate the best response in advance, resulting in saving time when disruptions happen.

Advancing Reliability through a Resilient Cloud Supply Chain

Microsoft’s cloud supply chain is crucial for providing the necessary infrastructure – servers, networking components and storage – that drive cloud reliability and business expansion. Microsoft’s goal is to make cloud capacity as accessible as a utility, allowing customers to activate it instantly when needed.

With Microsoft Cloud supporting essential services like business applications, government operations, life and safety services and financial sectors, customers must be able to scale up rapidly, even during sudden demand increases. It requires a resilient, predictable and agile supply chain.

Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 to improve resilience

Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing uses the advanced analytics and AI features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to holistically analyse production, operations, supplier data and market signals. This analysis helps customers develop resilient and sustainable supplychains.The following points explain how Dynamics 365 Supply Chain create a resilient supply chain.

Visibility and Risk Management

In today’s complex global supply chain, end-to-end visibility and risk management are crucial. Organisations must quickly predict, identify and mitigate disruptions like natural disasters, geopolitical events and pandemics to ensure operational continuity and customer satisfaction.

Supply chain visibility and risk management solutions offer real-time monitoring and analysis, using machine learning and AI to manage risks and compliance proactively. These solutions help optimise operations, reduce costs and improve performance.

Key use cases supported by Microsoft include supply chain orchestration, track and trace and risk management, all enabled by Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Warehouse and Fulfilment

With growing demand for faster delivery times, manufacturers need efficient warehousing and fulfilment solutions to satisfy customer expectations. Digital warehousing provides secure storage for raw materials, work-in-progress and finished goods, while fulfilment solutions facilitate timely product delivery.

To achieve operational excellence, manufacturers need real-time visibility into inventory, order status and delivery performance and the capability to manage supply chain partners. Microsoft supports these needs through Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, enabling automation, smart logistics and sustainable practices using digital twins.

Forecasting and Planning

Effective forecasting and planning are essential for manufacturers to avoid overproduction, excess inventory and costly supply chain disruptions. In today’s fast-paced global business environment, real-time access to data and analytics is crucial for informed decision-making and operational optimisation.

Leveraging machine learning, predictive analytics and real-time data, manufacturers can accurately forecast demand, plan production, and optimise inventory. It reduces costs and enhances delivery performance and customer satisfaction.

Microsoft supports key use cases like demand planning, inventory optimisation, and integrated business planning through Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. It in turn enables advanced demand forecasting and supply chain planning.

Used case studies

For making the manufacturing solutions like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management more agile companies make use of Microsoft Cloud. Here’s How:

One of the global audio and video brands (GN Group) has successfully made delivery estimates more accurate and provided employees with real-time visibility into parts on hand. Moreover, they streamlined inventory management by building a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) mobile solution that the warehouse staff uses to scan products.

Another example is a Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) development team that created a circular, reverse supply chain using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management for processing e-waste from Microsoft data centers that help in collecting, managing, reusing, and recycling old parts. As a result, the first Circular Center location has reused 83 percent of critical parts and recycled 17 percent of the old parts.

Make supply chains resilient now, prepare for future

For building a more resilient supply chain for the future, leaders should start investing in technologies today. Manufacturers face many challenges and complexities, but improving supply chain visibility, planning, and optimizing it will help these companies thrive and be future-ready. It is best to focus on bringing transparency, unifying data and distilling it into actionable insights, using Microsoft Capabilities to model scenarios, and predicting problems would help to face disruptions smoothly.

FAQs

1 What is Microsoft Supply Chain Platform?

Microsoft Supply chain platform is a robust platform where Microsoft AI, collaboration tools, low-code solutions, security measures, and software as a service (SaaS) applications are incorporated to enhance the performance of your supply chain. Leveraging components across Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, Teams and the Power Platform, it offers customisable building blocks to tailor functionalities to meet the customer’s unique supply chain requirements.

Customers can utilise various data connectors to enhance the visibility and responsiveness of their supply chain through Dataverse. Additionally, the Power Platform facilitates the creation of custom workflows, data analysis and applications that seamlessly integrate with the existing supply chain.

2 What are the five pillars of supply chain resilience?

The five pillars of supply chain resilience are mentioned below:

Demand and Visibility: It is the capability to monitor and track supply chain trends and events in real- time. Track and trace enable comprehensive tracking of goods and materials throughout the supply chain, providing real-time visibility, mitigating risks and accelerating time to market.

Vulnerability: Evaluating risk exposure is crucial. Companies must pinpoint bottlenecks and comprehend how disruptions (such as natural disasters or quality-related errors) affect their supply chain.

Management Culture: Businesses should have a standardised approach to assess their resilience. Resilience is assessed by qualitative, quantitative or combined methodologies.

Procurement: Maintaining long-term relationships with key suppliers, conducting supplier audits and dual-sourcing raw commodities are essential to address the first-tier supplier disruptions.

Operations: Adaptability as well as flexibility are essential. Businesses optimise operations by concentrating on visibility, collaboration, data control and managing foreign exchange risk.

3 What are the four key elements for achieving supply chain resilience?

Ans: The four key elements for achieving supply chain resilience are mentioned below:

Robust Risk Management: It can help mitigate financial fluctuations. Risk management offers a structured method for managing digital supplier performance, enhancing resilience and ensuring business continuity.

Flexible and Agile Operations: It is essential to have adaptability. Whether due to demand fluctuations, natural disasters or other unforeseen events, supply chain management must be able to adjust to demanding and changing circumstances seamlessly.

Strong Supplier Relationships: To ensure a reliable flow of goods and services, it is important to establish trust and collaboration with suppliers. These strong partnerships will improve responsiveness in times of disruption.

Transparent Communication: If you want fast resolution of challenges, open and clear communication is the key. Exchanging information about disruptions, production status and inventory status enhances resilience.

4 What are companies doing to ensure supply chain resilience?

Ans: Companies are trying to adopt many measures to achieve supply chain resilience for thriving in this evolving global dynamic. However, to not only thrive but to ensure supply chain resilience for continuous business productivity in this digitally advanced world, embracing the capabilities of an ERP is the only solution.

Disruptions affect different supply chain processes differently. As a manufacturing company, if you want to create a resilient supply chain, you need end-to-end visibility of the entire supply chain processes, including planning, procurement, manufacturing, distribution, order orchestration and delivery.

The data from disparate systems, such as Excel files and legacy ERP systems, need to be consolidated into unified real-time data.

An advanced ERP system can help you achieve all these capabilities and help you collaborate with your team in real-time. It facilitates agile supply and production planning based on changing customer demand and rapid sourcing of raw materials from suppliers to ensure the continuity of the supply chain in the face of disruptions.

5 How can supply chain resilience be improved?

Microsoft is continuously upgrading its processes to improve supply chain resilience. If you want to streamline all your supply chain processes, it’s the right time to leverage Microsoft ERP products.

The Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing aids customers in developing resilient and sustainable manufacturing supply chains through the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management platform. Advanced analytics and AI capabilities are embedded into the platform to analyse production and operational data, multi-tier data and market indicators.

The platform empowers manufacturers to analyse the supply chain in real-time, enabling more accurate anticipation and management of potential risks. Manufacturers can improve efficiency and responsiveness using real-time data and AI for enhanced demand forecasting, optimising inventory control and streamlining planning processes.