Hello everyone. firstly, I would like to thank Mark and Mike for giving this opportunity to present in the Con 42 Go Lang event. My topic of discussion today is information visibility and standardization, and the key drivers of the supply chain, so resilience. In today's volatile global business environment, supply chain resilience has become critical for organizational success and sustainability. Today in this presentation, we will examine how collaborative approaches, particularly information sharing. And standardization to enhance supply chain resilience. With the help of a case study, production forecast, vis visibility, which we have implemented in one of our clients, consumer goods industry. We will explore how shared information systems and. Standardized processes would improve risk management and overall supply chain performance. Also by highlighting the importance of standardizing the calendars for cost generation by timing, and then establishing global visibility for effective capacity and material planning. Okay, let's understand the resilience of supply chain definition, right? The capacity of a supply chain to anticipate withstand and rapidly recover from disruptive events while maintaining the business continuity and competitive advantage through flexible operations. that's where you call yourself as a resilient supply chain. And why is it? Why is it important? recent global disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate related dista disasters, cyber attacks, geopolitical conflicts, have revealed significant vulnerabilities in conventional supply chain frameworks. What we are going through right now today with the tariffs and the whole Panama Canal, challenges are so disruptive in nature that the entire supply chains are not. Sustainable. So it is very important and critical to build your ecosystem in such a way that you can have supply chain resilience. What are the key characteristics of supply chain? True resilient supply chains poses PO pro proactive risk identification capabilities. Robust contingency planning, diversify supplier networks and data-driven visibility that enable rapid adaptation to evolving challenges. Now let's talk about the collaborative approaches within the supply chain management. active cooperation is very important. Active co active collaboration approaches involve coordination between different entities within the supply chain network. Emphasizing shared decision making and no share goals. I can give you one example where, you have, the manufacturing plant operating out of different country and the distribution center is operating out of a different country, right? it could be like an intercompany or intercompany network kind of supply chain. Now, this manufacturing organization, which is actually doing the production. Based off of the forecast, which is shared by the distribution center. Now this distribution center is generating the forecast, and once that forecast is generated, it is shared with the manufacturing organization. However, manufacturing organization has to procure all the required raw material from various suppliers and eventually. Reduce the product, assemble the product, and then ship the product out from the manufacturing facility to the distribution facilities. So it is very important that you share your information across all these partners. Otherwise, you will not be able to produce the product and at the same time, you will not be able to fulfill your customer orders or the demand within the distribution center. So it is very important. For you to have information sharing across these partners and also have joint planning initiatives with synchronized operations. in a lot of industries, this is called synchronized business planning, or integrated business planning, where you are actually sharing all these information between across the systems and also between the different layers within the supply chain network, right? What are the key benefits? The key benefits collaboration delivers significant advantages throughout the supply chain ecosystem. Obviously, your forecast will be improved, you will have risk less, reduced inventory cost. You will be able to respond to market changes very quickly and precisely on time and increased overall supply chain performance, which will yield. Better results and which will also improve your inventory terms and also your profitability. Information sharing and visibility constitute the cornerstone of effective supply chain collaboration by establishing systems that provide real time or near real time access to critical data. Because this entire supply chain network organizations can develop more informed strategies and respond with agility. To unexpected changes, market shifts and operational disruptions, right? Enhanced visibility across the supply chain ecosystem reduces significantly the effect optimizes the inventory management through decreased safety stock requirements, and enable more precise resource allocation. This cross-functional organizational transparency ultimately lead to improved customer service levels, reduce operational costs, and increase competitive advantage and volatile market conditions. how can you make this happen? that's the final goal, but then how can you make all this happen at a different, strategies, at a different, levels of the organization, right? you need to make sure there is a comprehensive visibility. We can talk about one example from a comprehensive visibility standpoint. we know lot of times, the products are procured from different places and then they are basically stored within a warehouse. Now, there could be a situation where the container has arrived to the warehouse, but it has not. Unloaded, or it is not, the inventory is not pulled into the dock yet, right? The product is available, it's right outside of the warehouse. it's not available on the shelf, right? If you don't provide this information to the customer service will not be able to really commit to any orders, even though the product is not on the shelf. It's outside, available, outside on the dock. Probably you can pull that container out and then bring the product to the shelf maybe within 24 hours of post-processing time, right? If that information is not available to the customer service, you probably will lose the business. So it is very important to have that comprehensive visibility, not just comprehensive visibility, but real time data access if customer service is provided with this information. Then they should be able to really take, take that insight and commit to the customers, right? not just, it doesn't end there. So you need to really have your data and real time access between all the partners within the supply chain network. It could be suppliers, it could be manufacturers, or it could be distributors. If you do that, then that enhanced decision making capability will improve and then, and you will be able to have that increased competitive advantage and then maintain sustainability and profitability, which will in turn lead to financial sustainability. Now let's talk about the production forecasting and supply chain planning. Production forecasting is very important because. Unless your forecast is accurate, there is no way you will be able to manage your supply chain network. It is very important for you to have some kind of algorithm, some kind of modeling to do demand prediction, depending on the market needs. And then eventually converting that market prediction into a forecast at a, at a. Skew level or at an item level, and then that forecast getting converted into your capacity planning, right? it could be unconstrained planning or constraint planning, but end of the day you need to have some kind of capacity planning to align all your production capabilities. So once you do that, then you will be able to produce the product. However, when you have to produce your product in such a way that your inventory levels are optimized, if you just produce the product, more than the demand, then you will have, an increased inventory situation and your inventory returns would not be manageable. So you need to ensure your inventory optimization, and you need to make sure your stock levels are managed. So that you are not having the, increased or decreased inventory situation. And again, this again cascades back to the supplier management as well, right? If your supplier is not able to give you the product on time, you will not be able to produce the product. So this is more like a loop that. You are actually bringing in all your partners of the supply chain to ensure your forecast is good, and then your capacity planning is good and the supplier network is managed, and then your inventory optimization is maintained in such a way that your stock levels are not going up and stock levels are not going down, and then that agility is required to make sure you are proactive, risk mitigation, and ultimately strengthening. Competitive advantage in volatile market situations. Okay, now let's talk through a case study, production forecast visibility implementation. So the context here is a manufacturing enterprise was struggling, with supply chain vulnerability and increasing demand fluctuations and persistent disruption events, right? this is, quite natural with any organization where you have multiple layers of stakeholders and multiple layers of partners within the network. To address these challenges, the company launched a strategic initiative to strengthen its resilience through enhanced production forecasting capabilities, and then also share the information within the cross network so that all the stakeholders in on the network. Have the visibility right? What are the key objectives? The key objectives are to enhance demand production accuracy by leveraging advanced analytics significantly. Reduce procurement lead times per business. Critical components, establish optimal inventory thresholds throughout the distribution network and cultivate exceptional supply chain responsiveness and adaptability. Obviously, these are the key objectives, which. Yeah, any company would like to keep on their initiatives so that the context, whatever we discussed, can be addressed and solved. The implementation leadership, right? as a supply chain systems manager, someone has to own this, champion this, and then be part of that transformation initiative, orchestrating the cross-functional collaboration. Securing the stakeholder commitment and directing the technical deems to develop this sophisticated forecasting platforms and, integration systems. Because you have seven, eight partners here using different kinds of systems, it is very important for us to understand these systems thoroughly inside out and then build integration between these systems. Otherwise you will not be able to deliver the product what you want to be delivered, right? It is very important to have that orchestration between all the stakeholders and, internally have some kind of commitment, which can become more of a standardization and be that, lighthouse for the organization. Okay. Let's talk through what are the key components of this initiative, right? I know we wanted to initiate that project, what it takes to make that happen, right? what are the key components for this initiative? So shared, shared visibility, right? shared visibility is one component. establishing comprehensive access to production forecasts across manufacturing, plants and suppliers, creating a unified, authoritative. Source of demand projections throughout the supply chain network. So let's double click on what I mean by shared visibility, right? your forecast at a distribution center needs to be shared with the manufacturing organization, and in turn needs to be shared with your suppliers. So the distribution center. The manufacturing organization and suppliers are talking one single language and one single metric so that it is actually shared within a skew level data on what you wanna sell, what do you wanna produce, and what do you wanna make Right across all the layers of the supply chain. that's shared visibility, and then providing them access to that. Data within your system or within their system doesn't matter, but end of the day, you have to provide that visibility is what one objective of the initiative, right? Standardized processes, Standardized processes is very important. The organizations there, there can be situation where the organizations have multiple functions and each of these multiple functions could be managing. Multiple portfolio products. The way you forecast a thermometer versus the way you forecast a, a hair dryer is not same. thermometer is more of a, a, an item which is depending on. your, health related things, whereas hair dryer is more of a day-to-day product, which can or cannot have stable demand depending on the type of the product and the quality of the product and price of the product. however, you need to have some kind of standardized processes in your organization so that you have. Same language you have, same, calendar to ensure methodological consistency across all the business units in geographical regions. Now, the third one is the capacity planning. as I said, the tooling equipment, what is needed for manufacturing the thermometer versus a hair dryer could vary, right? Depending on the type of the product. The capacity planning conversation also needs to have, and then there, there has to be some kind of alignment on that. Capacity planning, a item procurement, optimizing the acquisition process of staff. Strategically critical, high value components is very important. What it means is within your supply chain, you probably definitely will have, okay, these are my aqs, BQs, and cqs. So it's like Pareto analysis. where you are saying, 80% of my revenue is coming from 20% of these products, so therefore I classify this as aqs, and then the remaining are probably B skews or cqs, right? So it is very important to figure out what those high value components are, and at the same time, what those high value co end products are or finished goods are. And then put together a plan with the help of, some kind of advanced notifications within, within, within the supply chain. Okay. Let's jump in and talk about the processes and the challenges, what we had, during the implementation. So standard, I know we talked about the standardization, right? the standardization efforts, establishing a unified terminology, unified performance indicators and operational protocols across all the business units. As I said, the way you wanna do for a thermometer versus the way you want to do for a hair dryer could be different. you really need to have some kind of standardization there to define what that unified terminology is, what that unified calendar is, what that unified metric is, and then ensure that the data is shared across all levels of the business units. So that, that's definitely one of the critical process and also a challenge which we had to solve. The second thing is the global integration, right? as I said, there are multiple stakeholders here, multiple partners in this, overall engagement. So you need to build all these data streams so that you are doing like a cohesive enterprise wide forecasting framework, right? and when you do this, you're not trying to do like a one size fits all solution here, but, but at the same time, you need to really thoroughly understand. The business use case and how you can make it work for that product portfolio and, build a cohesive enterprise, wide, forecasting framework, which has visibility across the network. Right? And the third one is, the metrics installation, right? deploying sophisticated measurement systems to quantify the forecast position is also very important. End of the day, if your forecast is not good, the success. Of the initiative will be very bad. So it is very important to agree to a number to have a KPI defined and not just KPI defined. It is also very important that your KPI is measured, right? I think I. Measuring and then reinforcement are very important. Unless you do that, there is no way you will be successful, and then unless we get the best results out of that, adoption will not be there. It is very important as a, an orchestrator or as an implementation leader to ensure all these, efforts and processes and challenges are addressed and, need to put together a mitigation plan on how we can. Make this happen. And also make sure have some kind of reinforcement model in place so that we can see that operational continuity across the supply chain. So these are some results and, performance improvements, what we achieved, once this implementation was done, right? the overall equipment effectiveness across the manufacturing. Facilities was increased by 15%. The reduction of the lead time was done through 25%. obviously there was a procurement lead time, which was happening. So when we classified and when we. Segmented all the items saying, okay, these hundred SKUs are a items, and so on and so forth. Our focus was on, which are high volatile items, which are low volatile items, and then which has, more of a coefficient of variation. When we analyzed it and when we segmented the data, we were able to identify all the AI items and for those items. We were able to reduce the lead time by 25%, which is a huge win. Which is a big win. And we had also stockout reduction, improvement. there was an increase of 30% in the stockout, reduction, which is a dramatic decline in inventory shortages for mission critical components. So you are able to, you are able to ensure the product is. Made and you are also able to ensure the product is on the shelf timely. And obviously that would, bring down your stock out reduction. And then the communication also got improved by 40%, which is phenomenal, right? market efficiency gains and cross-functional information exchange, as I said, as I gave that. Example of the warehouse and the product sitting on the dock, which was a very generic example. But in this case, as we communicated with, several stakeholders with real time data, with comprehensive data visibility, that the overall communication improvement was phenomenal. And it's 40%, which is a very huge. When, for the organization and for the function. And then the, it's a something to celebrate, as a supply chain, orchestrator. So I know we talked about, the initiative, but why actually did we do this? What are the implications for supply chain resilience? supply chain resilience will obviously bring in enhanced visibility, real time, shared visibility of demand forecast. Empower stakeholders to identify supply demand misalignments before they get escalated, and then take some troubleshooting and then have some strategic risk prevention. So enhanced visibility is one implication, improved planning. Precision forecasting has revolutionized, risk management practices enabling data driven resource allocation and sophisticated scenario modeling that anticipates disruptions rather than merely responding to them. we got to a situation where, we are having systems which are KPI driven, right? if I have to give you an example, today in the modern world, we have systems where you wanna say, what do I need to do to maintain my inventory? Turn of. Three thirds or four thirds, right? Or what do I do to make sure my service levels are 95%, right? So if that is the metric, what you want to achieve, systems are able to tell you back, this is what you need to do. You need to have. Product on the shelf. You need to have product on the shelf for aqs or BQs or a combination of aqs and BQs and so on and so forth, right? So all of these, all of this is able to happen with the help of improved planning, precision forecasting, and then it has really revolutionized and it'll work. Only when we enable data-driven resource allocation and sophisticated scenario modeling and all of that are really helping to bring back that resilience, which we discussed. Not just that, the standardization benefits, right? when you do across regional harmonization, instead of doing a siloed operations, within the manufacturing organization or within the supply chain where. one team is not talking to another team and then create, creating that siloed operational structure. With the help of this standardization, it is easier to address all the disruptions and then also optimize and then accelerate the decision making. I think that's the critical word here, accelerate the decision making so that your resilience is ba bring. Brought back into the game, right? these are some of the implications. And all of these implications were solved with the help of the project, what was done in the initiative we discussed. Okay. Let's talk through the key takeaways here. the collaborative approach, strategic cross-functional collaboration in forecast sharing drives a substantial resilience against, through synchronized decision making and transparent, information exchange. The value chain. So collaboration definitely brings, back that resilience, standardization value, implementing harmonized, global processes, with a calibrated, locally adaptable creates a resilient operational foundation that balances the consistency with necessary market responsiveness. Standardization has its own value where you will be able to mitigate the risk, and then also where you will be able to support. from a process standpoint and system standpoint, and more of a shared service value can be brought back with the help of the standardization, which will be resilient and, risk proof, right? not just that the continuous improvement, the supply chain resilience demands are persistent evaluation, right? as I said, reinforcement is needed, to keep your process intact, to keep your systems intact, and then all of that would happen with the help of continuous improvement. The, and then once you have the continuous improvement, it is very scalable to have some kind of systemic, upgrades and some kind of systemic assessments on a periodic basis. And then also not just that data driven refinement, right? today when you do your segmentation, you probably got aqs as a hundred. BQs as a hundred and Cqs as a hundred, right? Tomorrow, in next three months. To three years, your data might have got changed, right? So it is very important for you to have data-driven refinement considering the data at that moment, right? so all of that continuous reinforcement and pro active adaptation to emerging disruptive patterns is very important that continuous improvement is need of our, and then not just that, the practical application forward thinking. Organizations must prioritize, end-to-end visibilities, process standardizations and, cultural transformation as well to keep the sustainable and competitive advantage in the current, volatile market situations. With this, I would like to conclude, con for 40 twos, Golan event. And again, this is, mother Shema. It was an honor and, privilege to present in this event. And I would like to thank again, Mike and Mark for giving this opportunity to present in this Con 42 presented, Golan event for 2025. And if there are any other questions, happy to answer and thank you for the opportunity. Thank you.