In part one of this post we explored how to manage supply chain complexities and unpredictability. In this second part, we’ll help ensure chemical manufacturers don’t fall into a pattern of bad planning and skillfully anticipate seasonality.

To operate at its peak an enterprise needs to face and recognize the top trends that are reshaping manufacturing. Understanding these trends is the first step toward initiating a digital transformation. You can then take the additional steps designed to solve your business’ current problems, start showing value immediately, and help evolve a stronger business strategy.

Supplier seasonality and promotions

Thankfully, not everything about supply and demand is unpredictable—materials in the supply chain in various parts of the world follow their own, reasonably predictable seasonal patterns. For instance, cotton prices from India (the largest producer of cotton in the world, according to Statista) plunge when the harvesting begins in November, and stay low though when harvesting ends in March of the following year. This, obviously, has a significant impact on the fiber-garment industry.

In part one of this post we discussed the smartest ways to gain global visibility and respond to volatility in a food and beverage supply chain. And here in part two we will cover how to embrace the best technology. Addressing these key challenges can have a profound and positive impact on your entire supply chain—from procurement to manufacturing to delivery.

Embrace the best technology

When you're looking at building a better foundation to address the challenges you may be facing within your overall organization, there's a number of solutions to consider. These aren't necessarily always the options that fall into what you’d expect to be a supply chain solution, but they all overlap within your overall supply chain and will help drive effectiveness and efficiency.

The first example is formula management. Many companies want to ascertain that it’s creating the right products for the right country as there may be limitations from a global perspective of where you can sell a product. Trying to manage this manually is challenging. Being able to respond to inquiries from customers and prospects around the globe requires quite a robust formula management solution.

Project scope included 40,000 person hours of implementation efforts.

ICCG has completed a full-scale implementation of Infor M3 ERP. This significant digital transformation implementation is one of the largest ERP projects for Infor and very strategic for RSWM Ltd. as well.

RSWM Management requested ICCG to first help them implement Infor M3 in their Yarn Manufacturing business by onboarding users on Infor’s leading ERP solution for Yarn and Textile Manufacturing division. On successful completion of that implementation, RSWM embarked on the project of modernizing its enterprise systems for the Denim fabric manufacturing division and that has been successfully completed by ICCG team.

"We are pleased to have delivered this project on schedule, demonstrating our expertise in executing large-scale, complex projects," said Shiv Kaushik, CEO of ICCG. "The completion of this 40,000 person hour project achieves another milestone in ICCG’s 32 year history of successful implementations for Infor M3 ERP.”

Dear frustrated retailer:

Are you responsible for the success of your company’s retail business from sales, margin, and inventory levels to overall customer satisfaction? If so, what happens when a valuable customer tries to make a purchase from one of your stores or online but is disappointed when there is no inventory? Odds are great you won’t get them back. Out of stocks are a huge problem for your financial bottom line.

What happens when you have excess inventory in the wrong products, wrong locations, or at the wrong time, leading to disappointed customers? You might not be back. Slow moving, stagnant inventory stranded in various locations throughout your supply chain is a tremendous problem for your financial bottom line—and your career.

Your greatest challenge is balancing the need to satisfy customers with your business’ profitability and
growth. Customer loyalty is finicky. They demand inventory when they want it, where they want, and
have a myriad of options on their smartphone to change brands, retailers, locations, and delivery
method. In this new age of retail, you can’t afford to lose a customer to your competition. At the same
time, you can’t load up every location/channel with an infinite amount of inventory in hopes of satisfying every customer’s purchase

Digital technology is changing the world, one industry at a time. With these changes comes a reimagining of the supply chain, from the systems businesses use to communicate and interact, to the strategies they deploy to move goods around the world. Along the way, our expectations for speed, service, and quality go up, forever altered.

Digitalization gives rise to new business models, in which real-time connectivity, greater visibility, reactivity, and anticipation become the underlying characteristics of our supply chains. But this kind of change isn’t easy, and transformation doesn’t happen overnight. While many businesses have adopted technology to augment or enhance existing processes, they’ve still got a long journey ahead.

By taking a staged approach to digital transformation, and building greater connectivity across the supply chain, businesses can pave the way toward a fully-connected future, while still being able to tackle the biggest challenges they face right now.

Addressing the five common worries SMBs have over digital technologies

Digital technology is a hot topic in the IT world today. The media is buzzing with tales of total transformation occurring in a wide range of industries, from ride sharing in the automotive industry to the influence of Amazon® in the retail industry. Whenever such an abundance of hype arises around a topic, misconceptions inevitably creep into the dialogue. A common misconception plaguing small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is that their size may hinder them from joining the ranks of the digital-enabled.

This is far from true. SMBs can engage in digital strategies as well as any company. In fact, the SMB’s size often provides advantages, such as greater agility. In this paper, we address some of the common worries SMBs express and explain why digital technologies are essential for any growth-centered company, no matters its current size.

How do you identify the obstacles?

Food and beverage companies have long struggled with the unique requirements of shelf life management, complexities of batch scheduling, traceability, and many other factors. In addition, uncertainties around tariffs, sustainability initiatives, and growing regulations are some of a multitude of dynamics that will surely add even more complexity to the mix. Many of these issues and trends can have profound impact on your entire supply chain—from procurement to manufacturing to delivery.

In a recent Infor-sponsored webinar, Mike Edgett and Christine Barnhardt discussed a number of challenges as it relates to supply chain complexities in the food and beverage industry. In the webinar, we segmented the challenges into three buckets; gain global visibility, predict and respond to volatility, and embrace the best technology.

In part one of this blog post we’ll briefly go through the first two categories and part two will cover how to harness the finest technology. Click to watch the on-demand webinar for a deeper dive.

To stay competitive in today’s chemical industry, manufacturers must sustain a high level of operational productivity. Moreover, current issues like rapid commoditization, complex supply chains, aging assets, and increased need for dynamic operations planning make it more demanding than ever before to achieve the level of productivity that drives differentiation and innovation. Manufacturers often become locked into patterns where they’re implementing shortsighted cost-cutting measures that can adversely affect operational productivity and decrease overall market responsiveness.

To ensure you don’t fall into these traps, it’s vital that you not only understand the industrial challenges you face, but also recognize the top trends that are reshaping manufacturing. Gaining this knowledge is the first step toward building a foundation of digital transformation.

This blog post is a helpful summary of the top challenges a supply chain faces today. If you’d like to learn more about how to turn these obstacles into opportunities, please read Infor's recent executive brief for an even deeper dive into the topic.

As robust and far-reaching as ERP solutions can be, it's simply not feasible to think that they can be all-encompassing, providing complete business functionality for every aspect of an organization. The simple truth is that all ERP solutions have gaps in specialized areas such as product lifecycle management (PLM). Successful companies know that it's best to close these gaps with focused, industry-specific solutions that address the unique aspects of their business.

When it comes to addressing market and customer demands, aging enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications can hold modern day business back. Legacy systems can also prevent organizations from delivering value instantly to customers.

More than 80% of CFOs see identifying and targeting areas of new value across the business as one of their main responsibilities, according to research from Accenture. That's why CFOs, who are attracted to the cost-effectiveness and scalability of connected enterprise management solutions, are being swayed by the compelling functionality of unified ERP and enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions.