Gaining visibility in the global pipeline

One emerging tool that could greatly improve the visibility across complex global supply chains is supply chain event management. 

Source Styles, Peter, Determining supply chain event management , n Achieving Suppiy Chain Exceiience Through Technoiogy, Montgomery Research, San Francisco, 2002 

Whilst event management is primarily a tool for managing processes, its advantage is that it can look across networks, thus enabling connected processes to be monitored and, if necessary, modified. 

Clearly the complexity of most supply networks is such that in reality event management needs to be restricted to the critical paths in that network. Critical paths might be typified by such features as long lead times to react to unplanned events, reliance on single-source suppliers, bottlenecks, etc. 

When an event does not occur on time and/or in full, the system will automatically raise alerts and alarms through an escalation sequence to the managers controlling the chain requiring them to take action. 

---