Portals are a hill we have to climb
1 min read
All companies will have to get into portal technologies for their supply chains. “The climb is worth the view, and climbing is no longer an option,” says Geoff Varley of DuPont. Brian Tinham reports
portal technologies for their supply chains. “The climb is worth the view, and climbing is no longer an option.”
So says Geoff Varley, global logistics technology manager at DuPont Sourcing and Logistics, which has developed its global supply chain logistics systems for Dupont strategic businesses on GLog IT.
Its now global system handles everything from freight scheduling to warehousing, inventory management, document management, with event management and optimisation in between – synchronising activities, taking in vendor managed inventory, and connecting back into plant ERP systems using web portal technology.
“We’ve been building that for the last three years following work using client-server technology back in the early ‘90s. The Internet and web technologies have made it all possible. 75% of our global leveraged freight now goes through the portal.”
He sees local ERP systems handling manufacturing and materials planning, demand forecasting and the rest, but portals for supply chain operations. Varley expects his system to be widened to handle inbound materials logistics side too – although supply chain management will stay within the operating businesses systems because of sheer diversity.
For him, the portal development has been a complete success against all metrics, but he emphasises that it hasn’t been cheap. “Logistics portals on this scale are expensive, but we have 17 strategic business units so the opportunity across all of them was compelling.
“It enables us to collaborate with partners for some of the processes, and it works very smoothly. We’ve gained a holistic view across geographies, products, everything. And it’s all real time. It means we can plan for events before they become problems and be proactive; we can optimise the supply chain.”
Specifically, he says, the supply chain portal has improved business agility: “We can fix things not on the business plan on the run without fuss and with maximum efficiency.”
He also says that DuPont inventory has gone down, response times have improved, customer satisfaction likewise and freight is better optimised. “We’re making significant savings.”
