SaaS-Based Supply Chain Design

Transcription

1 EBook: A Day in the Life of SaaS-Based Supply Chain Design 6 snapshots to illustrate how elevating models to the cloud expands the benefit of supply chain design across the business 1

2 2 What are the limitations of desktop modeling? With the growing focus on improving supply chain operations as a competitive advantage, supply chain design has expanded rapidly to become a core competency for global businesses. But while desktop modeling was perfectly adequate for some time, technology and process challenges are limiting the potential scope and benefit of design. Supply chain design is often limited only to the supply chain and logistics functions within a business, or to a central office Building the large, complex models required to answer today s supply chain questions requires more computing power than a desktop can provide The cost of acquiring and maintaining server hardware required to run large models is prohibitive It s extremely difficult to keep modeling data current and organized Models can only be built and accessed on the desktop These challenges add up to effectively prevent large businesses from fully harnessing the power of design for continuous supply chain improvement and innovation. If the logistics question is bigger than the computer s processing power, how does a business answer it? If time is money, how much is lost in the years required to approve and execute upon capital expense for heavy-duty hardware? How much productivity and time is lost with the countless back-and-forth between the person building the model and the person analyzing the model to get the sensitivity analysis just right? Companies that maintain living digital models of their end-to-end supply chain have the ability to redesign and re-optimize the supply chain under changing market conditions

3 3 With the right technology, people and process, the design of a company s supply chain can be its biggest competitive advantage What if you could harmonize people, technology and processes on a collaborative supply chain design platform? LLamasoft SupplyChainGuru.com is the industry s only SaaS-based supply chain design platform. Using SupplyChainGuru.com, businesses can expand the influence and relevance of design by more rapidly executing large, impactful projects; sharing collaborative models with stakeholders across the organization and centralizing all modeling data and analysis to enable continuous supply chain improvement and innovation. SupplyChainGuru.com enables: Collaboration: Include key stakeholders in the design process Knowledge Management: Centralize modeling data and analysis Scalability: Run up to 100 scenarios simultaneously Mobility: Access to models, solve status and analysis from any device or browser Read on for six snapshots of how the SupplyChainGuru.com supply chain design platform simplifies and speeds model building and solving, and elevates design to a company-wide, collaborative process.

4 Design tied to a desktop, or in the cloud? Which would you choose? 6snapshots to illustrate how elevating models to the cloud expands the benefit of supply chain design across the business 4

5 5 1 Going it on your own vs. setting up a SupplyChainGuru.com account Okay, I get it, but why can t we set up this cloud stuff on our own? It s a common question. It s best to start by identifying the end goal. Is it just an internal centralized, secure modeling database you re after? Then certainly you can set it up with a lot of help from IT and enough processing power and server space. But if the ability to access on-demand cloud solving power, access models from any browser or device and share and collaborate on models with coworkers is important, consider setting your sights beyond just an internal cloud. And guess what it s actually a whole lot easier to expand your modeling platform to the cloud with Supply- ChainGuru than it is to build even a very basic solution on your own. Just for fun, let s compare.

6 Desktop V S Spec out technical requirements and hardware Put together petition for necessary capital funds and IT resources Get in line and wait for funds and IT resources After about six months, begin setting up etc. Get a half million dollars in and wonder what you were thinking Contact LLamasoft and set up user name and password 6

7 7 2 Tying up desktop in the office vs. running 100 scenarios from the coffee shop We all know what happens when you finish building a large model. You re finally ready to solve it but the moment is bittersweet because you figure your computer will be tied up for about the next 24 hours. Sound familiar? With SupplyChainGuru.com, you have scalable, on-demand solving power at your disposal, making waiting around all day for a model to solve a thing of the past.

8 For example, let s say you wanted to run 20 scenarios with different assumptions on demand, sourcing costs or fuel costs, and each scenario takes 10 minutes to solve. Desktop V S With your desktop, you would be waiting 200 minutes before you can review your results and compare the different scenarios. With SupplyChainGuru.com, you ll have 20 virtual solvers ready to roll and run them all in parallel, so you have all your results in 10 minutes or less. That means a lot more time to analyze and share your results, and a lot less time sitting around twiddling your thumbs. 8

9 9 3 Wearing a path in the carpet vs. empowering planners to run their own what-if scenarios In many businesses, the designer builds a model, solves it, creates reports and charts for analysis and sends them to the planners. That s where things get complicated. What if the scenarios weren t quite right? What if the planner needs a change to be made to the sites table, or to a sourcing policy or to the service level? The designer and the model must go back to the drawing board to work on creating a new set of scenarios and reports. Then the cycle starts all over again. What if, after building the model, the designer could simply share the model with the planners? And what if the planners could make adjustments to the scenarios on their own? It s easy using SupplyChainGuru.com. The designer simply shares the completed model with the planners and, through a simplified user interface, the planners are free to adjust and tweak to their hearts content, and create their own vibrant charts and maps to visually compare scenarios.

10 By empowering planners with easy-to-use modeling capability using the latest enterprise data, businesses can accelerate consensus, decision-making and implementation of supply chain improvements. 10

11 11 4 Different versions of the truth vs. centralized storage of modeling information Designers spend the majority of their time gathering and reconciling data, and once it goes into a model, it s sometimes anyone s guess whether it s up-to-date or whether a better version exists somewhere else. With SupplyChainGuru.com designers can centralize all projects, models and related data so that the information needed is always available, current and accessible to all. No more do managers need to poll every person on the team to figure out what everyone s working on or where a certain model resides. Now managers can simply log in and view a dashboard to see all modeling activity and related data.

12 12 5 Time-consuming report preparation vs. easy sharing of dashboards and maps After the model has been built and the scenarios have been run, the work of preparing reports to effectively convey recommended solutions to executives and other stakeholders begins. Often the designer must prepare and send reports for varying requests from all over the business, and use his or her best judgment as to what each person and function would find most meaningful.

13 13 Desktop V S Now designers and planners can publish and share model results with others within the business directly through SupplyChainGuru.com, where each viewer can access vibrant, impactful dashboards, graphs and maps on their own from any browser or device.

14 6 Uploading models to support website vs. automatic sharing of models via SupplyChainGuru.com 14 When an analyst runs into a problem with a model, sharing the model with the support team requires uploading the model to a separate support website, which is often a long process or not possible at all if the model is large enough. With SupplyChainGuru.com the model can be shared with LLamasoft support with just a click of a button, making resolution that much quicker. Support staff can access the user account directly to view models and provide recommendations.

15 Would you like to learn more about SupplyChainGuru.com? Download Brochure Contact LLamasoft Call: (866) LLamasoft, Inc. All rights reserved. v LLamasoft, Inc. 201 South Main Street, Suite 400 Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, USA Phone: LLamasoft.com 15