| HAVE
YOUR SAY |
 Does anyone outside
Westminister and the media really care about when
Blair goes? 
Ron, Porthcawl
Send
us your comments |
When the whole Quick Response initiative for consumer
goods and retail was getting established in the early 1990's,
(UCC-128 carton/pallet labeling, 856 advance ship notices), the
majority of those in the industry, both vendors and end users,
would have guessed that within just a few years virtually every
logistics flow would have been based on ASN visibility and receiving.
Well, there certainly has been a lot done (a lot of progress?)
in the retail chain and by many companies in other industries,
but I am still amazed, as we approach 2004, at the number of
companies, including major corporations, that aren't getting
ASN's even from their own plants into DCs, let alone from outside
suppliers.
Wow. I met with the CIO of a large restaurant chain recently,
who in a discussion of some new web based tools that could
make it relatively easy for suppliers to start generating ASNs
for them, reacted something like "We wouldn't want to
place an additional burden on our vendors."
I kind of thought it was more like supply chain integration,
which, by the way, saves you about 40% in receiving time and
improves inventory management.
So what's the deal? Ok, traditional EDI is expensive and harder
than it should be, but today there are lots of alternatives.
It just isn't that hard to get ASN's intra-network - the barriers
to doing so seem to be more political/cultural than IT or investment
related - the payback for the investment is huge. OK, so there
is a cost to manufacturing, and a benefit to distribution,
but isn't this what supply chain management is all about -
horizontal process integration, looking holistically at lowest
total costs? The web should make getting ASNs intra-company
and from suppliers a lot easier. So why aren't we further along? |
