How To Take Advantage Of a Cognitive Supply Chain?

Posted by Michel Smith on March 4th, 2020

Retailers and fashion brands today rely on the principle of quickly reacting to consumer demands and getting shoppers the product they want at the earliest. But, companies often face certain problems that prevent them from achieving their goal of a perfect demand and supply situation. This is where cognitive platform solutions come handy, but, let’s first explore the problems faced by firms:

Complex concept-to-customer process

Hundreds of decision points and participants are involved in the process of planning, developing, sourcing, producing and shipping. Now, delay at even a single decision point has ripple effects throughout the supply chain briefly resulting in cost overruns, late shipments, missed opportunities and late shipments.

Disparate information sources

Much of the information used in the decision-making process originates from external supply chain partners such as raw material suppliers and producers. Now, by the time this information is shared and incorporated into the company’s decision making cycle, it is too late to rectify the sources and therefore, disparate information sources often pose a problem in the supply chain. Though, this problem can be dealt with by employing cognitive platform solutions.

Too much lag time

In most supply chains information flows linearly i.e. from one department to another. Therefore, over-reliance on e-mails and spreadsheets compel teams to work with old information and disconnected systems further amplify the problem.

How cognitive supply chains overcome the current limitations?

1)Cognitive supply chains basically analyze all types of data within the supply chain ecosystem. Now, based on continuous integrated planning and connected execution models, AI establishes network orchestration, which increases supply chain velocity by using algorithmic decision making.

2)Companies that incorporate AI and cognitive supply chains throughout the operations ecosystem also benefit from the right product right the concept to delivery much faster. This is because unlike the linear supply chain, the cognitive supply chain continually analyzes situational data, optimal outcomes as well as automatically executes transactions.

3)There are 3 broad stages in the digital supply chain journey: connected, predictive and cognitive. Most of the companies are now entering the connected stage but there are also some companies that have already incorporated machine learning and are now moving to the predictive stage of the digital supply chain. These 3 stages are extremely important as the predictive and connected stages result in significant process for the brands and retailers, while the cognitive stage, on the other hand, is purely electrifying to deal with.

4)“Cognitive” is typically a buzzword in supply chains these days, but in a broader spectrum, the cognitive supply chains are increasingly becoming a reality for all types of business. This is because the retailers and fashion companies today understand the transformative benefits of cognitive supply chains are ready to incorporate them into decision-making.

Michel Smith is the author of this article. For further detail about cognitive platform solutions please visit the website.