Category Archives: Supply Chain

Part Analytics Get PARTicular About Your Electronics-Enabled Supply Chain and Source Smarter with Deep ANALYTICS-based Insight

Over the past few years a few vendors have come out of the factories to support your direct-specific supply chain, but there’s still only a few that specialize in the Electronics Supply Chain (especially when you include deep sourcing [automation] support) and PartAnalytics is one that you may not have heard of, but definitely should know of given their ability to drastically reduce direct sourcing times for electronics components while reducing costs, lead-times, uncertainty, and compliance.

Part Analytics was founded in 2019 to increase open collaboration between Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS), and suppliers, starting with a comprehensive, standardized source of information for direct components and materials used in electronics-based manufacturing. This would allow demand and supply information to be shared, costs and lead times to be better managed, and supply chain risks minimized. Founded by global sourcing professionals with expertise in electronic and electro-mechanical supply chains, they applied their deep knowledge of products and buying processes to build a solution that would not only simplify the sourcing process for components and bills of material, but also allow much of it to be automated.

The Part Analytics solution is split into four primary modules (which can be accompanied by a fifth that serves as a cross-platform executive dashboard):

  • Part IQ: Contains detailed part data for the electronic / electro-mechanical parts the organization sources
  • BOM IQ: Contains detailed information on BOMs used by the organization (for sourcing purposes)
  • Category IQ: Aggregates part information across BOMs to provide insights into demand, benchmarks, commodity, and supplier risk information and provide analytical insights to reduce spend, lead-time, and risk
  • RFQ IQ: deep RFQ functionality for sourcing (automation) on a Total Cost Basis (TCB) (with up to 97% manual time savings once an event has been setup)

In this article, we will look at each module individually, after noting that since Part Analytics is focused on the electronic and electro-mechanical supply chains, most of the sourcing projects (60% to 70%) revolve around PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards, not Polychlorinated Biphenyls) and related components. As a result, the focus of most of their customers is on part and material cost and lead-time optimization in those categories specifically, which is why their central focus in Part IQ is on those components.

Part IQ

Part IQ is the global supplier parts library that

  • represents the integrated catalog across all suppliers,
  • maintains the organization AVLs (Approved Vendor Lists)
  • maintains Part Analytics‘ and the customers’ internal PPE (Prescribed Parts Equivalent) lists
  • maintains part cost and risk details by part
  • makes global search by part and equivalent quick and easy

Part IQ contains a database of hundred of thousands of components from thousands of suppliers globally and provides real-time inventory availability monitoring from distributors and suppliers. It’s also capable of monitoring part availability and notifying the buyer as soon as a specific part becomes available anywhere in the network.

Deep detail is maintained on every single part and includes information such as manufacturer and part number, usage, prices, savings opportunities, and alternates. It also cross-references BoMs containing the part, known risks associated with the part, and Part Analytics.

This allows a design engineer to quickly gauge availability during R&D or build-to-order quoting, as well as sourcing professionals to quickly gauge immediate availability, lead times and expected pricing if they also have Category IQ (to be discussed later) as it can pull in trends and insights from the Category IQ module. If they integrate with their PLM, they can also see current inventory within the tool as well as pull in product forecasts to see if the available supply is likely to meet their demand.

It also helps R&D to ensure compliance with industry and market requirements as Part Analytics harmonizes all of the data and they can quickly tell not only if a product is compatible, but if it is compliant with certain regulations as detailed specifications with the required material composition will always be available in the drill down.

BOM IQ

Arguably the core of the suite, BOM IQ (or Bill of Materials IQ) stores all of the electronic / electro-mechanical bill of materials being sourced by the organization as well as associated forecasts/demands from the PLM solution (and can push updates on material availability, inventory, AVL, and approved PPEs into the ERP if desired).

At the BOM level, it provides an organization with insight into:

  • the overall health rating (based on compliance, material/product risk, product/part/line-item health)
  • the number of unique line items with lead time, lifecycle, single source, RoHS, or other supported compliance risk (if data feeds/subscriptions are available)
  • the current annual spend summary and projected spend summary
  • BOM cost trend over time
  • the total estimated savings available from based on alternates and negotiation

For every line item it also stores all of the relevant associated information including, but not limited to manufacturer, distributor, current costs, usages, risk/health rating, and information from past events. It’s very easy for a user to navigate around the BOM IQ product and see not only current prices and usage, but to drill into associated risks and compliance.

In a nutshell, the solution provides actionable data by leveraging technology to contextualize data from hundreds of sources including distributors and manufacturers.

Category IQ

Category IQ rolls up the line-item/part/component/material intelligence by category and allows an organization to get an overview of their spend, opportunity, and risk from various points of view such as commodity, supplier, business divisions and products. This allows the organization to get a comprehensive view of spend and savings potential from different viewpoints and make the best overall sourcing decisions for the organization.

More importantly, the organization can also see a roll-up of risks and non-compliance by category, which can be filtered to certain risk types to allow the organization to address the most critical risks first. Especially since it can roll up the number of units in a given life cycle state, being single sourced, etc. and drill in to parts coming from a specific region to allow an organization to quickly assess the potential impact of geographic/geopolitical events and disasters on the supply chain.

Once the buyer has a firm handle on her categories, she can proceed to sourcing in RFQ IQ.

RFQ IQ

With a strong understanding of her categories, a buyer can initiate sourcing projects using RFQ IQ. This module simplifies the sourcing process by allowing buyers to set up events with ease. Key elements include defining line-items or BOMs, approved vendors, questionnaires, and bid sheets with detailed cost breakdowns.

Upon receiving bids, buyers benefit from a comprehensive summary that highlights the total parts up for bid, the number of bids received, and potential new spend based on the lowest bids. This summary also offers insights into category spend by business unit.

The platform enables buyers to delve deeper into individual supplier bids, comparing spend differentials and assessing the impact of choosing specific bids. Buyers can utilize automated features to award the lowest bid by supplier on a part or BOM basis, or make manual adjustments to finalize awards. Notifications are then sent to suppliers, and the award details can be integrated into the ERP system to initiate the contracting and P2P process.

One of the standout benefits of RFQ IQ is the ability to automate much of the sourcing process. Once the master file is established, buyers can launch events by simply defining timelines. Automation can handle the process from initiation to award recommendation, significantly reducing manual effort. For example, one client saw a reduction in manual effort from 710 hours to just 10 hours, thanks to the module’s robust automation capabilities. While results may vary, most organizations experience efficiency gains of 30% to 60%, depending on their automation preferences. Additionally, the overall sourcing process time can be cut from months to mere weeks, providing substantial time savings.

Furthermore, since the demand can be defined by business unit, it allows their customers to maintain their decentralized structure (as the platform can support bids by business unit when each is in a different location and would dictate a different landed cost) while still supporting volume consolidation through a Centralized Center of Excellence (COE) for cost reduction and best practice sourcing. This also allows an organization to get a fully centralized view into their global supply base by category, BoM, and part; identify key areas of material/part/product-based risk that needs to be assessed; and harmonize costs and lead-times at the same time.

By giving buyers a global view, they can identify all FFF and F component alternatives, including those that are more readily available, higher in quality, and/or earlier in their life-cycle, allowing the organization to identify potential strategic OEMs and suppliers early. And for off-the-shelf, always having centralized insight into global supply across hundreds of distributors is extremely valuable when a disruption happens in your current supply chain.

Furthermore, the fact that Part Analytics is PLM (and not ERP) first means that buyers have a firm handle on not only what Manufacturing needs, but what R&D is working on and can ensure R&D is not designing for materials/parts that could be expensive or hard to get and/or maintain a stable supply of when there are more affordable, more available, or more reliable alternatives available.

Plus, if desired, part and BoM population can be done entirely from spreadsheets, allowing for an organization to get up and running quickly as a) most organizations without a system custom designed for electronics / electro-mechanical direct sourcing, even if they have a modern PLM (and/or ERP), maintain all their part and BOM info in spreadsheets. Not only does this allow Part Analytics to get an organization up and running quickly, but it also allows them to instill best practice as Part Analytics serves as the Parts Master and, once the PLM integration is completed, always keeps the BOM in synch, and the organization never has to worry if they are sending the sheet with the right version of the BOM (was that v.21 or v.23 we finally decided on) to a supplier for bidding.

Looking Ahead

Right now, it’s just cost trends over time for category intelligence, but by Q4 Part Analytics intends to release advanced commodity/sub-commodity insights around pricing trends, availability, and lead time using advanced analytic and forecasting algorithms and supply and demand signals in their Category IQ Module.

Also, as indicated above, future releases will support more data integrations for supplier (and not just material/component/part-level) risk analysis.

Summary

Part Analytics is a great solution to harmonize sourcing, inventory, and supply chain visibility in your electronics and electro-mechanical spend categories. Furthermore, it’s real-integration to hundreds of OEMs and distributors provide invaluable real-time insight into supply, demand, lead-time, and cost trends and benchmarks that can help organizations get a better handle on their overall sourcing efforts, especially if they primarily run as a decentralized operation across product lines / business units or geographies, especially since it can unite engineering and commodity sourcing teams on one coherent picture. It’s a great solution for part-based supply chain visibility, and for deeper insight into how to achieve this, you can download and checkout their handbook on supply chain visibility.

The More Things Change …

… the more they stay the same … and the more relevant the past, and the education of, becomes.

Ten years ago today, the doctor asked are you doing it wrong?

Ten years later, the question is just as valid now as it was then. Because if you were doing it right, your supply chains wouldn’t be in such disarray.

Ten years ago we noted that, if you’ve been following the media, you know that we have reached a point were most major business publications are now putting focus on Supply Chain as your top risk and your top opportunity and that they have been preaching the following solutions to not only tame the risk but increase the opportunity.

1. Comprehensive Category Management

Nothing has changed here. One consulting firm is literally sending the same email newsletters they were sending a decade ago on the topic because it’s still relevant, and most firms are still doing it wrong.

As the doctor noted a decade ago, spot buying individual categories at market lows or evening running reverse auctions at opportune times is not category management, not in the least — nor is running your buys through a “magic” or “delightful” intake-to-procure platform (better called “faketake” as a colleague of mine will point out). As was said before, Category Management isn’t just about grouping all seemingly related items and running an event, it’s grouping items that have related characteristics that allow the items to be sourced effectively under the same strategy — which could even be early renegotiation with an incumbent who might give you a great deal to keep you from going back to market. It’s taking a holistic strategic approach, not just mapping to UNSPSC or some out-of-the-box 2-level taxonomy and running with it. And not doing it is what’s resulting in stock-outs and cost-overruns. Because now, it’s not just price, it’s quality and supply assurance. Especially supply assurance. Which brings us to …

2. Supply Chain Risk Monitoring

Not much has changed here, even though the technology now exists for it to change at the majority of multi-national companies. A decade ago, we noted that natural and man-made disasters devastate supply chains when they result in raw material or product unavailability for weeks or months. When a company doesn’t understand their dependence on a single source or the risks that single source is subject too, they can figuratively get caught with their pants down to say the least. Still holds true today.

A month ago we also noted that most leading companies in the Risk Management arena are now tracking and monitoring their tier 1 supply base for not only missed deliveries, but late shipment dates and inquiring immediately when something is late shipping. However, by the time a shipment is late, it’s often too late to go to another source if the reason for the lateness is the lack of an important raw material. Multi-tier monitoring is key, but most Procurement departments are only now exploring supplier risk management in their supplier management module / application, which is tier 1 — even though we now have a number of great solutions that can monitor to at least tier 3, if not down to the source of each raw material in your supply chain. Considering that any good supplier information management solution will allow you to push in risk, compliance, performance, and visibility data, there’s no reason not to be monitoring your critical supply chains. Especially now that we can easily handle:

3. Big Data

What used to be the biggest buzzword-du-jour (before all this useless Gen-AI, desired only by Dr. Evil himself), Big Data is still desirable, but only to the extent you actually have valid, verified, data. Considering that the algorithms that actually work predict demand, acquisition cost, projected sales, etc. based on trends — unverified non-demand, cost, price data (for the wrong product) is NOT going to be of any help.

Get a real data analysis tool, validate the data at your disposal, and use it to your advantage, no more, no less.

Supply Chain Resilience is Becoming Key, but You Can Only Reach it By Design!

But while it used to be a relatively straightforward Supply Chain Network Design problem (especially if you had a good SCND tool with optimization and simulation capability), it’s become a lot more complicated.

A recent article over on Logistics Viewpoint on Resilience by Design: The Power of Simulation in Supply Chain Strategy did a great job of explaining the power and importance of optimization in supply chain network design (and demand fulfillment modelling), especially around optimizing cost between two potential fulfillment options (determined to be equally viable).

These days, you have to consider:

  • the reliability of the supplier (financial viability, raw material availability to it, geopolitical instability, etc.
  • the reliability and availability of the carriers (financial viability, available containers, route viability, etc.)
  • the carbon contribution of the fulfillment model (is it going to make targets today AND tomorrow)
  • … and how your supply chain will adapt if a supplier or carrier fails or a primary product becomes unavailable and you have to switch to a secondary product

That’s true resilience … not just managing costs under demand shifts, but managing availability under supply shifts — in the supplier, carrier, or product.

It’s a tall order, and not all platforms in our space can handle it (well beyond standard SSDO), but a few can. From a network management viewpoint, you can check out Logility Network Optimization (formerly Logility Starboard) and Coupa with their SSDO and SCNO solutions.

The reality is that it doesn’t matter how great of a deal you inked if you can’t actually acquire the products at the agreed upon prices, and, more importantly, if you can’t even get the products at all! So if you want a resilient supply chain, you need to design for it. And sometimes that goes beyond just doing the standard 80/20 or 50/30/20 splits (because if all the suppliers are in the same fault zone on the ring of fire … it will only take one disaster for them all to burn).

MeRLIN Sourcing, A Platform With a Twist …

INTRODUCTION

When their founders were young men
they paced the fact’ry floors
from Vellore down to Chennai
they must have walked ’em all
cause they learned all of the problems
that plagued the Procurement side.
Those listen, look, and learn guys
sure made a lean platform.

The founders of MeRLIN, who started Rheinbrucke Consulting in 2013, started developing a stand-alone application for direct source-to-contract (and, for those who need it, source-to-pay) in 2018 using their decades of experience supporting direct manufacturing clients. MeRLIN was then frst released it to the market in 2022, after ensuring it actually solved the problems they were seeing and met the needs of the companies they were working with.

(While some companies might take it as a badge of honour to get a “minimally viable product” to market in a year, the reality is that when it comes to manufacturing enterprises, nothing you can develop in a year will actually solve more than a fraction of their problems, and unless what you deliver can integrate tightly into their existing enterprise software landscape, it won’t be adopted, or even bought. That’s why there are so many offerings in indirect [many of whom will succumb to the marketplace madness] and so few that offer true direct sourcing solutions, and fewer still that offer fully integrated source-to-contract / source-to-pay suites.)

PLATFORM SUMMARY

MeRLIN, which bills itself as a Source-to-Contract platform for Direct Material (primarily Discrete Manufacturing) Sourcing, is actually a Source-to-Pay platform where the Procure-to-Pay platform capabilities are baseline (and wouldn’t go head-to-head with best-in-class) and designed for the mid-market (and large enterprise) clients that don’t have a Procurement solution in place already (either through the ERP, AP, or a third party system). Since most larger enterprises have some form of decent P2P, MeRLIN decided to focus primarily on the critically underserved strategic sourcing marketplace in discrete manufacturing and direct sourcing and the capabilities all of the companies the founders worked with in manufacturing were universally missing.

MeRLIN was designed as a modular solution where

  • a client could license just the modules they wanted/needed,
  • common modules, and capabilities, were broken out into their own modules so their was no duplication of functionality, and
  • key modules could be augmented with additional value-added functionality not typically found in average products.

MeRLIN has all the standard modules you’d expect in a Source-to-Contract:

  • (Program &) BoM Management (Requirement for any Direct Solution)
  • Requisition Management (Intake)
  • Sourcing (Event) Management (Sourcing)
  • Supplier Management (SXM)
  • Contract Management & Contract Authoring (CLM)
  • Reports & Dashboard (Reporting & Analytics)

As well as basics for Procure-to-Pay:

  • Purchase Order Management
  • Invoice & Payment Management

But also has modules for:

  • Demand Management (Consolidation of Requirements from Requisitions, Manufacturing Programs, and MRPs)
  • Category Management (Part/BoM grouping & management)
  • Supply Chain Compliance (GSCA / LkSG)
  • Supply Management (Document & Shipment Management)

and the standard suite foundational modules of:

  • Master Data Management
  • Business Administration
  • Security Management
  • System Management

And even modules for:

  • Strategic Project Management (Project Management/Orchestration)
  • Finance Management (Budgets, Prices)

We’re not going to discuss all the modules and instead focus in on just the core Source-to-Contract modules, as they are the modules that are critical to direct sourcing and the modules that will allow you to understand the value, and potential, MeRLIN has for you.

Supplier Management

Supplier Management is designed to onboard, evaluate, approve, and manage suppliers, including their contacts, surveys, ratings, and documents. Qualification starts with a simple request based on supplier name, country, email, and unique (DUNS) identifier. Based on the supplier category, the next step will be to send the suppliers the qualification surveys and pull in the external risk information, send it to technical and risk reviewers, and if that passes, it will go off to compliance to ensure the supplier can comply with all necessary regulations the company is subject to and then, if that passes, the supplier will get a registration invite to provide all of the additional information necessary to do business with the company as well as details on additional products and services.

Supplier Management captures all of the core company information, locations, accounts, questionnaires, risk information and scores, compliance reviews, scorecards, and approvals. For each of these there are standard fields, and as many additional fields can be added by the customer organization as needed.

Compliance Management

Collects and manages the organizational policies, supplier policy statements, compliance surveys, audits, risks, scorecards, and complaints. It can accept all documents, support custom surveys, import third party data from financial and environmental (and other) risk providers, provide you with compliance scorecards, and automatically extract and centralize all “risks” from the surveys based on scores and/or responses in a risk management view.

Moreover, in full compliance with the German Supply Chain Act (GSCA, known as the LkSG within Germany), MeRLIN provides the buying organization, each of their suppliers, and their entire employee base, a unique portal where they can register complaints. They have upgraded their platform to fully support the GSCA and can also support other supply chain acts as well (and future releases will encode more out-of-the-box support, even though it can already be custom figured on a client-by-client basis to support the majority of acts out there).

Requisition

Requisitions can be used as traditional requisitions for purchase orders against existing contracts for goods and services normally used by the company or as intake requests for sourcing. When they are used as intake requests, they go to a central management screen where the buyer can group them by material, bill of material, and/or category to identify sourcing event requirements and then create a sourcing event off of a bundle of them.

Sourcing

Sourcing is primarily RFX based, but auctions are supported as well off of base RFQs. A sourcing event can be kicked off from one or more requisitions, a category, a BoM, or an event template, which can consist of one or more RFIs, questionnaires, and line-items with custom price breakdowns in the RFQ. Associated with the RFQ can be the suppliers, addendums, budgets, stakeholders, terms and conditions, contract template, event schedule, and ongoing Q&A.

In addition to being able to review bids by total cost per unit and evaluation score (by the relevant stakeholders), the application also supports automatic award recommendation by criteria which can include target award by supplier, range of suppliers to split the award between, minimum and maximum shares, and preferred supplier status.

Contract “Authoring” & Management

The platform is primarily “signature” and “execution” management, as authoring is simply the packing up of contract templates, terms and conditions, specifications, and associated addendums for agreement by electronic signature. The electronic signature capability is compliant with USA regulations and most European regulations for private enterprise contracts. Once the contract is signed, the platform can manage the project timeline, stakeholders, documents, events, milestones, and obligations. In addition, the user can define alerts against any event, milestone, document, obligation or other entity on status change or due date.

Reporting & Dashboards

Reporting and Analysis in MeRLIN is through widget-based dashboards that summarize any data of interest in the system. Right now there are hundreds to select from in the reporting library, with more being added as needed. For each of the built in reports and dashboards (on suppliers, spend, process, etc.), the user can apply multiple filter options and save the configuration to their liking. There is no Do-It-Yourself (DiY) widget report builder yet, but more DiY analytics enhancement is on the roadmap.

Strategic Project Management

This is MeRLIN‘s built in project management capability where a user can define and instantiate RFX templates, supplier onboarding workflows, contracting processes from award specifications, procurement processes, and even entire Source-to-Procure projects which collect all of the necessary templates and workflows together. In addition, leadership is provided with a high level overview of sourcing projects.

Master Data Management

All of the system master data templates can be altered by the user including, but not limited to, currencies and conversions, items, locations, plants, prices, suppliers, contract metadata and milestones, and other key items. The customer can control it’s master data and master data identifiers.

Business Administration

All of the templates in the system can be managed and customized in the business administration section including, but not limited to supplier onboarding, qualification, evaluation, and audit questionnaires, product and item templates, requisitions, RFQs, purchase orders, contract terms, contracts, statements of work, email, and workflow templates.

Bill of Materials Manager

A key aspect of Direct Sourcing is managing the Bill of Materials. In the Merlin platform, that can be done through the BOM Manager, which unlike basic direct sourcing platforms, can maintain as many versions of a Bill Of Materials as the organization wants to maintain (for correlation with historical sourcing and procurement and cost estimates during new product design and/or product modification).

These versions can be uploaded from the ERP (or your PLM of choice with custom integration) or created in the BOM Manager, and this creation can be from scratch or from a previous BoM version which can be copied and modified as needed.

The best part of MeRLIN‘s BOM manager is its built-in ability to allow for easy should-cost analysis during NPD and BOM (re)design. Once a BOM has been uploaded or created, the user can click a button to “cost” and it will automatically find prices for every component in the BOM for which it has a price from a contract (first), catalog/commitment (second), or quote (third). Then, the user can push the remaining items to the Demand Management module for quick quote (or import into the internal catalog from a connected source) or simply create a place holder item (with an estimated cost). They can then return to the BOM Manager and re”cost” the BOM to get a complete cost estimate, which can be compared against the cost of all prior BoM versions (that were costed). This allows the organization to understand the costs associated with BOM changes over time (independent of supplier or distributor pricing changes). Gone are the days where you have to use a completely separate application to do BOM cost estimation.

Finally, the next update to the BOM Manager will allow for the user to enter a cost estimate directly in the BOM manager for materials/parts not yet quoted for even quicker price estimates, and those estimates will be clearly marked as internal estimates only.

Other Capabilities

We’re not going to discuss the procurement modules as they are not MeRLIN‘s focus (but we will assure you that they cover the foundations if you don’t have P2P and need it), demand management as you know what forecasting should do, category management (and category strategy management) as that is rather self explanatory, or finance management, as budget and price management is also straight forward.

The Full Picture

The platform is quite deep in all core areas and one could write pages about each module and its deep capabilities, but hopefully this is enough to convey the facts that

  • the MeRLIN platform was designed from the ground up to support direct and discrete sourcing,
  • has the capability to support these projects from inception to contract signing through the very last order against the award, and
  • goes beyond just raw sourcing capability to related capabilities of supplier risk, compliance, and execution (tracking the order to the delivery and qualification)

CONCLUSION

Given the relative lack of true direct and discrete sourcing platforms in the mid-market, MeRLIN is a platform you should definitely be aware of. If you’re in direct manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, and related industries, you might want to check them out today.


It’s for discrete wizards,
it’s a platform with a twist.
A discrete wizard
needs a tech assist …

Another Supply Chain Misconception That Should Be Cleared Up Now

Yesterday we discussed one supply chain misconception that should be cleared up now because, despite all of the misconceptions mentioned in an Inbound Logistics Article, it was not addressed. However, there is a second misconception that is almost as critical that was not addressed either, so today we will address it. And while, there are, dozens of common misconceptions (including the 22+ mentioned in the article), these are the two that are the most critical to understand, as they are two that pose the most risk in most of today’s Procurement organizations.

 

THE SECOND BIGGEST SUPPLY CHAIN MISCONCEPTION

Supply Chains Have Reached (A New) Normal

Supply chains have never been, and will never be, normal as they will always be in flux due to perturbations, delays, and disruptions that happen daily. You may not see all the trial and tribulations a third tier supplier goes through every day, but trust the doctor when he says they have just as much turmoil as you do. Nothing is predictable in supply chains. When you accept this misconception in conjunction with the first misconception, it’s easy to see how almost all of the others are also misconceptions (that highlight slices of the bigger misconceptions).

For example:

  • cost becomes much less important than supply assurance due to the unpredictable nature of supply chains
  • since it’s not a linear, closed, model, zero-sum doesn’t apply
  • we made up the stages of planning, buying, transportation, and warehousing silos to fit a theoretical definition of normal that doesn’t exist
  • there is at least a hand-off at every stage, so the process is not disconnected but linked, if not intertwined
  • etc. etc. etc.

When you accept the reality, Supply Chain Management, as well as Source-to-Pay, will become a lot easier to manage because you will realize that

  1. only human expertise can adapt to new situations and find real-world solutions to the new challenges that arise
  2. technology will allow you to automate the tactical / semi-normal operations and instead focus on the exceptions and challenges, making you more productive as you focus the majority of your effort on strategy and thinking vs (e-) paper pushing and thunking which is the only thing the machine is good at (and, based on current technological understanding, ever be good at — which is exactly why we can limit it to the thunking because it can do over 3 Billion calculations a second flawlessly [if we ditch the “AI”] while we struggle to do 3)

In other words, only intelligent, adaptable, humans can manage constantly changing supply chains. Good technology can alert them and give them the intelligence they need to make good decisions, but technology cannot make those decisions for them.

(And the doctor, who dreaded saying Bye, Bye to Monochrome UIs can’t wait for the day he can say bye, bye Gen-AI.)