Supply chain efficiencies more important than ever during busy holiday season

In the world of electronic components, the product life cycle and suppliers available along the supply chain can seem to go around and around in an almost endless circle. And during times of peak demand – such as the holidays – manufacturers need to know they’re working with the right suppliers and have assigned the most efficient protocols to get their products to market as quickly as possible.

So, when an issue is discovered during material receiving or elsewhere along the supply chain that will impact the process further down the chain, everyone involved needs to be made aware. In many cases, though, those notifications don’t make their way to the right people, causing bottlenecks in the process that could have been avoided.

Enter the TrackWise solution from Sparta Systems, an enterprise quality management solution (EQMS) that optimizes quality, ensures compliance, reduces risk, and lowers costs. Mohan Ponnadurai, the Industry Solution Director in Sparta Systems’ Product Management Group, noted in a recent interview that TrackWise is in a unique position within the industry because it provides one centralized receptacle for managing supply chain visibility and operations, monitoring incoming supplies, manufacturing operations, assembly operations, inspections, consumer purchase and every other touch point along the supply chain. 

“As manufacturers ready a product to go to market, this system harmonizes all of the quality processes, supporting greater transparency from the very beginning to very end of the value chain,” he said.

Gone are the days of compartmentalized silos in which one department notices and resolves an issue, but never tells the next department that touches the product what happened or how it was resolved. No longer is intellectual property surrounding the handling of situations that arose 15 years ago lost as soon as an employee leaves the company. In fact, the latest version of TrackWise includes predictive analytics that enable organizations to turn historical data into a predictive model that can provide proactive and actionable information, which can be used to both mitigate risk and identify opportunities that are likely to generate the greatest value.

Getting in at the ground level of the product manufacture chain, suppliers must prove their reliability, cost effectiveness, performance, and improvement capabilities to remain a critical component within the chain. Solutions such as TrackWise allow suppliers and manufacturers to openly communicate throughout the process, honing and improving processes and materials in real time.

“At the end of the day, this solution saves time and money. Through efficient process tracking and open communication, the product cycle time is tightened, thus reducing costs, improving standards and strengthening relationships between B2B and B2C customers,” Ponnadurai added.

One trend that Ponnadurai notes has been growing during the past decade is that of suppliers being hand-picked by manufacturers to become an integral part of their team. Through open communication at the ground-level of a product supply chain, suppliers can ensure they are providing exactly what the manufacturer needs. In many cases, the manufacturers are helping to design the components they intend to buy. A solution like TrackWise provides great value in these instances as well, helping to facilitate and track the communication between designers, developers, engineers, and line staff in real time.

As shoppers take to the malls, retail outlets and online shops this holiday season, perhaps no time is more critical for efficient supply chain management. By employing a enterprise quality management solution such as TrackWise from Sparta Systems, manufacturers and suppliers can ensure that products are coming on line quicker and at a lower cost — and who doesn’t like that?