SAP Supply Chain Management
SAP SCM 5.0
Today, as one of the key processes within an adaptive business network, SAP's vision of the adaptive supply chain network has become a reality. The goal: replace the traditional linear supply chain with a responsive, flexible, and dynamic network of supply chain partners. This accelerated evolution is in response to rapidly advancing technology and a clear and pressing business need: adaptability.
Adaptability – the ability to respond to and thrive on unexpected change – is now a key competitive differentiator. It is vital for you to enhance your capability to sense information from the market environment so you can then turn this information into insight and respond accordingly to the situation based on certain business circumstances.
In today's turbulent economic environment, business strategy has reached a turning point, and two opposing forces must be reconciled. One force is the need for efficient operations of stable business processes. The other force is the need to instantly adapt to rapidly changing business conditions. As a result, every dimension of business requires greater efficiency, speed, agility, and responsiveness. The ability to plan, execute, sense, and respond based on real-time signals is fast becoming a significant competitive advantage.
The result is an adaptive supply chain network that is not only demand-driven, but can also leverage its assets to influence demand where appropriate. This requires a dynamic synchronization of demand-driven planning, logistics, and network execution based on real-time information that provides the capability to:
To help customers accelerate their move to adaptive supply chain networks, SAP has consistently enhanced and extended the SAP Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM) solution to integrate planning and execution by design – not after the fact.
SAP SCM enables collaboration, planning, execution, and coordination of the entire supply chain – empowering companies to adapt their supply chain processes to an ever-changing competitive environment. The SAP SCM solution transforms traditional supply chains from linear, sequential steps into an adaptive supply chain network in which communities of customer-centric, demand-driven companies share knowledge, intelligently adapt to changing market conditions, and proactively respond to shorter, less-predictable life cycles.
In December, SAP will deliver SAP SCM 5.0, which will concentrate on both the adaptive supply chain network and the ability to link the service supply chain with the product supply chain.
As a result, we will focus on:
- Service parts planning
- Service parts execution
- Forecasting and replenishment for retail operations
- Supply chain planning and collaboration for the apparel and footwear industry
- Supply network collaboration with Kanban and outsourcing
- Adaptive manufacturing with shop-floor integration
- Extended transportation planning and execution
- RFID-enabled supply chain planning and execution
- Demand-driven supply networks for the consumer products and chemicals industries
- Project manufacturing for the industrial machinery and components and aerospace and defense industries
- Supply chain design and analytics
The move to the adaptive supply chain network is a journey – and SAP has come a long way very quickly. With SAP SCM, you can already increase adaptability and accelerate and improve processes by eliminating errors, increasing visibility, and reducing the need for manual intervention. This journey is, of course, continuing. But the road map to the future is clear. SAP will continue to follow it and to ensure that SAP SCM provides the capabilities needed by tomorrow's adaptive supply chain networks.