For supply chain managers and inventory planners, it’s often one order in a shipment that they’re desperately waiting to receive. Although the shipment contains a batch of orders, there’s one particular item whose arrival is critical for a sales promotion or production of a popular product.
That’s why an Advanced Real-Time Transportation Visibility platform should do more than just track shipments — it should track orders inside a shipping container or trailer. Supply chain managers need to know what’s inside the box to manage the inventory pipeline with granular detail to ensure specific products and parts are available for production, distribution, and, most important of all, sales.
project44 Gives Supply Chains Order-Level Visibility
project44 recognizes that inventory management in the end-to-end global supply chain today requires order-level precision. Companies need to be able to track down to the stock-keeping unit (SKU) level to manage the inventory flow from the start of the supply chain journey to the final customer destination whether that’s a warehouse, factory, store, or e-commerce fulfillment center.
project44’s visibility platform gives managers that requisite order-level detail. By leveraging our order-level visibility, supply chain managers can know where every component of an order is in the world at any point in time. They can undertake pre-transit planning to be able to allocate and assign inventory to specific customers or locations.
Improved Supply Chain Execution
Order-level visibility improves supply chain execution in a number of areas. For example, it improves cross-docking, the logistics procedure retailers use to speed up the flow of replenishment goods and avoid warehouse storage. Cross-docking involves bringing in goods from multiple trucks into a distribution center (DC) and combining product from those various deliveries into a single mixed-product shipment for a specific store. (See our blog “Cross-docking Execution Requires Visibility into Prepaid Shipments. https://www.project44.com/blog…”) By having SKU-level visibility of what’s coming on an inbound truck, a supply chain manager can target specific goods to a specific store delivery with precision.
E-commerce merchants can take advantage of order-level visibility to maintain customer commitments. By knowing when a specific item in a shipment will arrive at a fulfillment center, e-commerce retailers can know when a popular product will be available to online buyers and provide fulfillment in time to make cut-offs for last-mile delivery. Just-in-time manufacturers also benefit from order-level visibility of shipments in-transit by having the ability to track SKUs to maintain tight production schedules.
Order-Level Visibility Bolsters Demand-Driven Supply Chains
Running a demand-driven supply chain today requires the flexibility to manage inventory in transit. To respond to changing demand, companies need the flexibility to redirect SKUs in transit to address a critical product or part shortage. project44’s real-time advanced transportation platform gives supply chain managers an order-level view of shipments, so they have the supply chain agility to respond to demand changes, make inventory readjustments, and position SKUs to where they are most needed.