Considering its financial impact on so many global markets, the recent Suez Canal blockage understandably garnered significant attention. It is an interesting story, in part, because we operate within a truly global economy. While a focus on on-shoring or re-shoring are part of the solution, it is not as easy as saying make everything here. For some manufacturers, the most recent supply chain incident meant a stoppage of raw materials or needed components. For others, it meant finished goods were at a standstill, meaning missed deadlines, which, depending on contract language, can get costly in a hurry.
The real story goes well beyond the Suez Canal or any global shipping challenge for that matter. These incidents should be about what manufacturers can learn, and what actions they can take to address the undeniable shortfalls in current supply chains.
Below, Ahmer Inam, chief AI officer at Pactera EDGE, shares his insights on how properly utilized artificial intelligence could play a meaningful role in addressing these issues and lessening the impact of damaging incidents.
IW: In what ways could AI play a role?
Inam: Disruptions caused by the pandemic, and now this shipping crisis in the Suez Canal, clearly serve as a warning to companies across the board: Don’t wait for an unexpected crisis to wreak havoc on your business. The tools now exist to proactively plan and protect your interests. And most of those tools are powered by AI and data.
Ahmer Inam, chief AI officer at Pactera EDGE
A proactive, data-driven approach to a disruption - like the supply chain chaos caused by the ship grounding in the Suez Canal - could significantly mitigate the business impact. Real time data about inventory, demand, projected demand, and alternate supplies, when run through properly trained AI Platforms can render surprisingly effective contingency plans.
Does your business know, at a drop of the hat, what cargo they have on the affected ship, for instance?
Does the business have an AI powered platform in place to simulate and forecast the impact of these supply side issues on the demand side? Can that platform conduct scenario planning exercises to inform and suggest critical business strategies for handling disruption?
Can that program then use connected partners and marketplaces to quickly source and fulfill products from other sources?
AI can play a role in limiting the damage caused by unexpected occurrences, leveraging real time data - both from internal and external ecosystems – to quickly run best case scenarios for getting out of the jam.
IW: What actions should companies be taking now to be better prepared going forward.
Inam: A good strategy for businesses is to develop and focus on the right key performance indicators (KPI). As an example, week-on-hand (WoH) is a fairly common and generally accepted supply chain KPI - but it is backward looking, whereas weeks-of-supply (WoS) is a forward-looking KPI that can help businesses plan better for what’s likely to come.
The numerator for this KPI would be forecasts generated by an AI/machine learning platform (factoring in multi-dimensional factors that impact demand) and the denominator would be holistic inventory positions (items in factory, on dock, on ship, on trucks, in warehouse etc.).
A focus on this KPI will accelerate an enterprise-wide transformation that will help ensure that a business has near real-time data of their inventory positions (with AI and AI-IoT enabled supply chain transformation) so that they can better plan to respond to global and local events (e.g., Suez Canal, shipping accidents, port strikes, hurricanes, broken trucks etc.) and their potential downstream supply side impact.
Businesses going forward need to implement a platform like this, and the good news is, such platforms are getting more robust and more available to a wider range of businesses.
Businesses don’t have to think of this as a boil-the-ocean transformation. They can establish more robust data sharing partnerships with their existing logistics providers (or use this as a mechanism to rationalize logistics providers to focus on those that can provide inventory positions data in near real-time). They can use current secure cloud data architectures for their vendors to share data with them and use AI platforms to generate predictions of likely events and their potential downstream business impact.
Like most manufacturing companies Intel needed to take an initiative to figure out how to empower working from home without interrupting production throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
In order for its factories to run safely, it had to look at a variety of challenges.
Understandably, Intel’s manufacturing processes are already highly automated, and it had a proven Manufacturing IT global operation model in place long before the pandemic. “However, pandemic travel restrictions and the mandate that employees should work from home if possible, led us to develop innovative solutions to keep employees safe while still maintaining factory operational excellence,” says Jeff Walsh, the general manager of manufacturing IT at Intel.
“We developed a hardware and software platform, for Remote Operation Center (ROC) technicians to use, to monitor and control factory operations from home. Specifically, we enabled and scaled multiple remote communication and diagnostic capabilities; scaled remote access and IT collaboration capabilities; provisioned a large increase in personal computing laptops; and accelerated upgrades to a more modern collaboration framework to enable better video conferencing quality,” says Walsh.
The key outcome from the ROC is that Intel successfully socially distanced the ROC technicians by having some remain working in the on-site ROC, while others were effectively performing their duties working from home. “The latter demonstrated ROC responsibilities could be successfully achieved remotely,” he says. In addition, Intel increased the number of tool sets into its remote diagnostics capability that its vendors use to help troubleshoot and maintain process tool availability and performance. Moreover, Intel had to make changes to the remote diagnostics capability to achieve more robust performance.
“For several years, we have been exploring use cases for augmented reality (AR) throughout Intel factories. Social distancing and restricted travel rules expedited the AR programs. For instance, we found that pictures and videos, presented in real-time through AR glasses, help provide clarity for technicians when they need to perform a specific sequence of actions required to service a tool,” says Walsh.
AR has also proven to be a highly effective training tool for Intel. Instead of performing over the shoulder training, trainers can now take advantage of AR’s remote assist functionality. The trainer wears a headset and performs the operation, while the trainee observes on his or her laptop and asks questions for clarification.
“Roles can also be reversed, meaning the trainee performs a task while the trainer observes which results in more in-depth training,” he says. “Finally, we found that AR enables remote collaboration with our suppliers, which can help reduce time-to-repair and provide technicians with new skills, while avoiding travel and quarantine issues. To date, we have identified nine manufacturing AR use cases that can deliver significant performance breakthroughs.”
While the pandemic drove Intel to adopt remote operations more quickly than it might have otherwise, the payoffs will stretch far into the future, explains Walsh. “Having more flexibility and more options to increase agility is beneficial for Intel. We plan to continue investing in these capabilities,” he says. “Looking back over the last year, I’m impressed at how our team came together and embraced creative solutions in the face of a monumental challenge. We’ve had proven success running large-scale, 24/7 manufacturing operations remotely, which is no small feat.”
Looking ahead, it begs the question about how to think differently about global manufacturing centralization, adds Walsh. “Today, each Intel factory site around the world has a dedicated operational model. Now we are looking to see how we can optimize our factory operations infrastructure through more globally centralized means,” he says. “This could potentially lead to significant cost savings. We have some smaller scale experience that has proven to be successful.”
April 07, 2021 at 02:18PM
https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and-iiot/article/21160254/forget-the-suez-canal-supply-chains-need-attention
Forget the Suez Canal. Supply Chains Need Attention - IndustryWeek
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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