A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with Nil Durak, Chief Operating Officer at Solvoyo as part of ARC’s Supply Chain Forum. In this conversation, Nil and I spoke about the big picture of supply chain digital transformation, as well as taking a deeper dive into the supply chain planning market as well as the role of digital twins.
I asked Nil to give some deeper insights on a few key points. First, give me a little background on Solvoyo for those people that may not be familiar. Second, why has the supply chain planning market performed so well in the midst of a pandemic? Third, what are some of the other big trends you are seeing in the market? And finally, are digital twins just a model of the supply chain or is there more to it? Below are some key points from our discussion. You can watch also the full interview below. And stay tuned to the end of the interview for a quick breakdown of how to use data analytics to help streamline your business.
Supply Chain Planning Market Growth
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global supply chains and the technology markets that make them function. However, while many software markets were hit hard, the supply chain planning market has continued to grow. The reason why planning got extremely popular has a lot to do with decision making. In the midst of all this disruption, what really mattered was all the internal and external sources of signals that were processed right and converted into smart decisions. For retail companies, for example, understanding fast-selling SKUs and automatically adjusting safety stocks to avoid stockouts became extremely critical.
Supply Chain Planning Market Trends
Additional market trends can be put into a few buckets. First and foremost is data; and there are two components of it. First is data quality. Getting master data right has become a very important theme. Additionally, detecting anomalies in data and correcting them on a continuous fashion is crucial.
Second would be access to data. This includes different types of data such as weather data, competitor data, and click-through data coming from external sources. This would also take into account customer and vendor data to include in the planning realm.
A third trend would be around associations in data. For example, if there was a disruption in a raw material, understanding what that particular raw material’s impact on the supply chain would be. Then, the company can take mitigation actions.
A final trend is smart analytics. This means understanding your stock outs before they happen, or taking actions related to your slow-moving items.
Digital Twins in the Supply Chain
A digital twin is a twin of the supply chain. But the twin of the supply has to be a living organism. Models suggest that it’s basically a static view, but to the contrary, a digital twin is in sync with the physical supply chain and connected to data sources. This takes near real time or real time information and converts it into ultimate decision making. This enables the alignment of horizontal decisions from demand all the way to transportation on a digital twin, connecting them to strategic and tactical decisions all on the same platform.
About Solvoyo
Solvoyo is a cloud-native supply chain analytics and planning company. The company’s philosophy is that the recommendations coming out of their engine would be of such high quality, that they would be executed without any touch. Solvoyo has seen the importance of automated decision making, especially during the COVID pandemic. As a result, it sees itself as partner to take its clients from digital to intelligent to ultimately autonomous.
Solvoyo’s customer A101 spoke at last week’s ARC Supply Chain Forum. You can find the registration link to view that session here.
