How to Integrate Supply Chain Planning with ParkourSC

ParkourSC’s supply chain digital operations platform is not a supply chain planning application, execution application, or supply chain data lake. ParkourSC combines specific data from these applications and real-time sensors to provide intelligence to make or automate the best-case decisions.  We bridge the gap between planning and real-time information and can automate the decision-making for execution applications.

We all know that the vast, complex, and detailed planning and forecast plan will change immediately after it is released and fed into the execution applications. This is no fault of the expert planners who are doing their best to look into the future. Unfortunately, no one can predict the future (i.e., the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the high demand for personal protective equipment).

“Technology has evolved to meet the challenge of orchestrating faster and better decisions, but planning processes have not – and they have started to become barriers to success.” - “Maverick Research: The Digital Era — The End Of

S&OP?”, Gartner, June 2022

According to Gartner and Maverick Research, by 2026, 90% of supply chains will continue to be demand-driven (forecast-accuracy-driven), significantly impairing their overall performance. They recommend that the supply chain's strategic, tactical, and operational information be considered so a company can make the most optimum decision or automate the decision depending on the impact.

This is precisely what ParkourSC’s platform allows you to do. Visualize the data and make or automate the optimum decisions based on your strategic, tactical, and operational information that include real-time signals from your worldwide supply chain.

Data Sources

Planning Applications 

Our open API structure allows the collection of data from any enterprise supply chain planning application for seamless information sharing, which may include supplier forecasts; production capacity and yields; demand forecasts; inventory levels; route, lane, and carrier costs; and product or customer gross margins (i.e., any data available).

We don’t store this data in some big data lake, but use it in real-time to provide up-to-the-minute information needed for analysis and decision-making. It is also used in our digital twin, which models the supply chain for predictions and automated decisions.

Real-Time Signals and Sensors

Combined with the planning data, we accept signals from real-time sensors and outside data. We are sensor agnostic; data from any GPS, temperature, humidity, tilt, shock, or dwell time sensor can be added to our platform.

In addition, our API also can pull in real-time data from carriers, weather, traffic, news, and social media that may affect your supply chain (i.e., a typhoon in Southern Asia, a strike at the Los Angeles port, Covid lockdown at the port of Shanghai, or a major traffic accident on Interstate 90).  This data creates an information system that helps to better see the full picture of your supply chain, in real-time.

Execution Applications

The last significant type of data we can pull in is from your ERP, WMS, TMS, 3PL, and SCM execution systems.  These systems’ data tell us what our short-term operational execution data looks like and if these execution plans need to change due to a supply chain disruption or shipment quality excursion.

Visualization

ParkourSC’s digital twin feature is a visual representation of your entire supply chain with real-time data from all data systems, signals, and sensors. Instead of reviewing your planning application data or excel sheets, then switching over to your ERP system, and then checking your TMS system for current in-transit shipment, you can visually see all this data in one place for quality control and bottom-line execution in a visual dashboard.

You can see how your entire supply chain is matching your planning forecasts, spot current disruptions and alerts to quality excursions, and see all of your KPIs in one place within our dashboards.

The digital twin and dashboards allow you to run scenarios with real-time data to maximize your On-time, In Full (OTIF) performance, resolve disruptions, and prevent potential quality excursions. Because our platform has more data than planning applications, it provides better intelligence on how a decision affects your business goals, financial goals, production process and customer needs. 

This visualization, notification, and alerts can be shared with your customers, entire supply chain partners and team.

Execution

After analysis and scenario analysis, you have the option to manually change the planning and execution system to match the new situation on the ground and real-time supply chain activity.  Or depending on the impact of the change, you can also add AI engines and workflows into our platform to automate decisions to more common disruptions.

These automated actions can be anything you specify or what your AI can recommend, from sending commands to changing supply, demand, production, or logistical forecasts.  You can automate rerouting shipments due to weather or traffic conditions or move production from one location to another due to new demand requirements. If there is an API in that system, ParkourSC can automate your change execution.

Summary

Many current companies believe that the solution to poor planning and forecasting is to hire better planners or buy better planning applications. But this only solves one segment of the varied business environment and supply chain strategy issues.

Real-time disruptions and fast changes in customer demand can only be addressed with a supply chain operations platform that can ingest all available data from your strategic, tactical, and operational system, including real-time signals from your worldwide supply chain. When you have the right information, analysis, and intelligence, you can make the best business, financial, and customer decisions. ParkourSC is the only supply chain operations platform that best fits this need and provides your supply chain with more agility, resilience, and growth.

Contact us to learn more.