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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?
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