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The number one technical challenge for manufacturers wanting the goal of a synchronised, demand-driven supply chain is getting ‘visibility’. Put simply, lack of real-time supply chain information is the biggest barrier to achieving the promises of cost reduction, time compression and agility. So we continue to build in safety stock, lead time and ultimately inflexibility precisely because we just don’t know what’s going on this minute, and the next and the next. It’s not that it can’t be done: it can and is with web-based technologies in all sorts of sectors – but not by many. Which brings us to the number one business challenge: recognising that our bigger picture manufacturing operations aren’t anything like as slick, cost effective or competitive as they could be. We may well have moved mountains internally in production, and even progressed lean thinking, for example, into other departments so that the right information flows just in time, the right processes are automated and the rest of it. But what about extending that to our suppliers?
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