P&SC LIVE Dubai: Optimising Supply Chain Strategies
Presenting at Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE Dubai, Ashish Sood, Chief Supply Chain Officer at LandmarkGroup, shared expert advice on how to optimise your supply chain strategies.
The essentials: data, tech and people
Ashish began his discussion by outlining the importance of data, technological innovation, and people to supply chain optimisation, explaining it is: Based on data and on tech capabilities; from a data standpoint we need to look at what available sources of data are, especially at what is clean, and from a tech standpoint we have to look at where the opportunities to advance exist.
"There's also a third, big part, which is having the right people capabilities who will ensure that all of this optimisation is done."
He stressed the importance of these systems working together, explaining that during the pandemic, the supply chain disruption was caused because one or more of these elements was impacted at a time.
"The space between tech optimisation and hyper automation is now coming very close to each other; hyper automation is how do you automate the manual process or decision making because what you see is when there is a challenge or there is a disruption in the economy, something stops."
He also explained that the quality of data has changed, "now the ERP data is quite clean at a transaction level, all the data is available and you can download it you can look at it you can have multiple optimisation engines sitting on top it. There are new transaction management systems that are coming in, whether you look at a WMS or you look at a last mile delivery side."
Risk management strategies
We asked Ashish about the risk management strategies he has deployed in his role, and he stressed the importance of being aware of upcoming risks before disruption occurs:
"what happens is by the time the disruption starts, its already scaling up and creating a critical situation. You have really prepare well for the disruption and notice the early signs up front."
"For that reason, having end to end end visibility in the supply chain is very critical and it has to be automated. You shouldn't need people to work out spreadsheets to figure out what's happening. Automated reporting saves you a bunch of time even if it's a one week of time that one week is very precious because that's the time when the full disruption has not hit and you have time to take some actions to prepare for it."
He went on to give an example of the importance of this automation:
"We have to look at each execution decision which is happening on the ground or let's say you are looking at how many people to deploy for various activities in the warehouse, all of those processes have to be completely automated so that when disruption hits your people can do higher order stuff rather than trying to run behind those core execution related aspects and people also become a big precious commodity at that time."
Similarly, he emphasised the importance of creating mutually beneficial, strong partner relationships before any supply chain issues hit; "if those partnerships are strong then they will stand with you through the disruption."
To hear more insightful discussions like this, secure your tickets to Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE London here.
P&SC LIVE continues to expand
Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE continues to expand its repertoire of events, with more to come in 2024 and 2025. Discover our essential diary dates below.
2024 diary dates:
- Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE London | 24-25 September 2024
- Procurement & Supply Chain Awards | 24 September 2024
- Manufacturing & Mobility LIVE | 6 November 2024
2025 diary dates:
- Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE Singapore | 11 February 2025
- Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE: Scope 3 | 5-6 March 2025
- Manufacturing & Mobility LIVE | 5-6 March 2025
- Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE Dubai | 29 April 2025
- Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE Chicago | 4-5 June 2025
- Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE London | 23-24 September 2025
- Procurement & Supply Chain Awards | 24 September 2025
- Manufacturing & Mobility LIVE Chicago | 4 November 2025
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