Your supply chain's speed and efficiency depends on the flow of synchronized data between you and your partners. The first step: making sure your own data is clean and consistent.
When change occurs, the agile organization will spring into action, delivering a swift and effective response. The era of lumbering corporate giants has finally given way to the age of the nimble, adaptive competitor—one that considers agility to be both a competitive weapon and a corporate strategy. The more agile your organization, the new thinking goes, the better it will be able to handle such challenges as growth, structural change, globalization, and regulatory pressures. But how do you achieve agility?
A key prerequisite for becoming agile is to make sure all stakeholders within the enterprise share a common view of the data that they use to make business decisions. This enables all parts of your business to work together more effectively than if each part had its own view of the business and an independent plan of action. In order to do that, enterprises need to achieve a clean and consistent interpretation of master data, or standardized attributes that are common across multiple items—for example, price, size, location, and Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). Master data management (MDM) is a program that helps enterprises ensure that the quality of the master data that is used by all stakeholders within an enterprise remains high.
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[Figure 1] Global data synchronization network conceptual topologyEnlarge this image
However, an enterprise is only one node within a value chain. As competition continues to increase, more enterprises are recognizing that their ability to become (or remain) agile depends heavily on their trading partners. If those trading partners stumble, an enterprise's potential breakthrough performance may not yield overall value chain improvements, and those solid improvements will end up being wasted. For an entire value chain to increase its agility or achieve extended breakthrough performance, semantic reconciliation of master data needs to take place across multiple enterprises. Known as "global data synchronization" (GDS), this program should incorporate any relevant industry standards and stretch across multienterprise business processes.
The benefits of such a program can be significant. Managing information more effectively across the value chain not only increases agility but also reduces costs, keeping information integration problems to a minimum and allowing everyone to work from a single consistent, consolidated, and authoritative version of the information. In addition, companies that share information across the value chain are increasingly deriving competitive advantage because they can marshal their assets, partners, and people to work in unison to outmaneuver business rivals.
Sharing data beyond the enterprise
Today there already are many examples of master data being extended or shared across trading boundaries:
In the automotive industry, data and semantics (the intended meaning of the data) are shared to support collaborative product design as well as multienterprise business processes related to forecasting and replenishment.
In multichannel retailing (where an enterprise sells the same product, sometimes to the same customer, via different business channels—stores, kiosks, direct/catalog sales, Web sites, and so on), data on products, customers, and locations must be aligned across all of the channels' business processes as well as with third-party logistics operators.
In the consumer goods industries, significant amounts of data are shared with trading partners in order to support dynamic business processes such as promotions, new-product introductions, and product substitutions.
In the food-service industries (where buying products is consolidated through a small number of companies that represent large numbers of national and local restaurant chains), trading partners require alignment of data for common items needed by multiple customers.
In both business-to-business and business-to-consumer commercial trading, many suppliers across many industries sell their products and services via a "browse and buy" catalog or service based on commonly accepted data definitions.
Yet in spite of all these data-sharing efforts, the poor quality of master data has become a hot topic for many industries. When you look at an enterprise as part of a wider value chain, the reconciliation of master data becomes much more complicated than it is internally. That's largely because the majority of the data that are consumed by an enterprise reside outside the enterprise. As a result, the enterprise lacks any formal control over those data or the associated external business processes. Therefore, internal enterprise information management and external global data synchronization are two core programs that should be part of any chaos-resilient supply chain management strategy.
An example from the consumer-goods industry
Although the approaches and the IT solutions may vary somewhat, the issues and general concepts of data synchronization apply across most industries. Two sectors that have made significant strides in advancing global data synchronization are retail and consumer goods. These efforts have grown out of an industrywide focus on improving product introduction and replenishment processes. A number of large global retailers—including Wal-Mart, Target, Carrefour, Metro AG, Home Depot, and Ace Hardware—have been working with their distributors and suppliers to develop governance models for the creation and maintenance of master data, industry data dictionaries and data models, and compliance and certification processes for those data directories.
The result of their efforts is what the industry calls the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN), which is managed by the not-for-profit global standards organization GS1. GDSN is a collection of enterprise and industry data repositories that are connected electronically in order to assure that product and attribute information is aligned across the value chain. It is focused on ensuring the semantic consistency of product data and other associated master data to improve business agility and to reduce waste.
GDS is achieved via the deployment of a large global product directory that is referenced by all buying and selling processes. Called the Global Registry, this directory serves as a very large "look-up" table of core data such as Global Trade Item Number and Global Location Number (which is used to identify legal entities, trading partners, and locations). The registry is accessed by local or remote data pools, which are repositories of both the core data and extended data (such as price) pertaining to products or commercial contracts shared between trading partners.
Sellers use their data pools to publish product data and other master data. Buyers use their data pools to subscribe to these data. Manufacturers and distributors (sellers/publishers) create and enrich these data (which can include packaging instructions, operating manuals, and warranties) throughout the product's lifecycle. Buyers consume and further enrich the data, even to the point of sharing it with consumers. These data pools can be hosted by data-synchronization services such as 1Sync, Agentrics, GXS, or Sterling Commerce, or they can be maintained behind an enterprise firewall.
The information is stored in the data pools and linked via the Global Registry to the rest of the community (see Figure 1). Only the data needed to uniquely identify the item and seller (the "thin" data) are stored in and registered with the Global Registry. These data include item code, Global Trade Item Number, product category, owner, and other core item attributes. Globally, this represents very few attributes, but, for many products, this nonetheless translates to a very large database.
Additional data needed to support all current and future business processes (the "fat" data) are synchronized automatically between publishers and subscribers based on the rules related to the subscription (such as frequency and location) and the relationship requirements. Some partners require unique data attributes to do business; others require more standard data elements. In all cases, this data flow (represented by the blue line in the figure) takes place outside of the normal electronic data interchange or business transaction flow (represented by the black line).
Figure 1 shows a conceptual or logical topology of the GDSN with publishers (suppliers), subscribers (retailers/buyers), and their respective (country, regional) data pools synchronizing messages via a (global) product registry.
Currently, the GDSN is still at the foundational level. Further development will be needed before the network can fulfill its promise of helping participants increase agility across the value chain. Through 2009, the IT consultancy Gartner expects to see improvements in agility through more efficient business processes related to new-product introduction and price/promotion collaboration as adoption increases in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Other industries follow suit
Global data-synchronization efforts are not unique to the consumer goods and retail sectors. Other industries are also looking to improve supply chain agility and end-to-end decision making across their value chains. We have seen comparable initiatives emerge in the life science industry, such as the Global Healthcare Exchange, or GHX (www.ghx.com), which is building an industry product catalog. Similar programs have been introduced in the automotive manufacturing and retail sector through the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (www.aftermarket.org) and National Automotive Dealers Association (www.nada.org). Likewise, the Coalition for Healthcare eStandards (www.chestandards.org) and the Health Care EBusiness Collaborative (www.hcec.org) are developing standards for data synchronization for medical logistics.
Indeed, the GDS framework is valid across any network of trading members and, therefore, can be extended across any industry. It is a framework that can support any number of stakeholders in an industry where the community desires to improve value chain agility.
The right start: intra-enterprise synchronization
As users embark on their GDS programs, they will realize that they can't share even simple data with trading partners unless the data behind their own firewalls is clean. Master data management, then, is a prerequisite for global data synchronization. If your internal data aren't semantically consistent (for example, if one application represents price in U.S. dollars and another in euros), then you will fail to realize the benefits of data synchronization and will be unable to mitigate the costs of external integration. Furthermore, by feeding your partner bad data, you risk causing significant harm to the relationship.
MDM is almost a mirror image of GDS. If GDS is about semantic reconciliation of master data among enterprises, then MDM is partly about the semantic reconciliation of master data inside the enterprise. Yet MDM is the process by which all forms of master data will be managed, not just the product and commercial data needed for GDS.
Different industries are at different stages of the data management effort. Tier-1 members of the retail and consumer goods industries are already active in data synchronization. Tier 2 and below are also active, although often by category/vertical industry: consumer electronics, hard lines (that is, household goods like garden, kitchen, and household furniture), and so on. In the life science industry, tier-1 members are working with GHX to build their first centralized product data catalog.
The technologies needed to achieve MDM aren't all new, and much effort will be expended in aligning technologies that are already deployed in the enterprise—for example, for product information management and customer data integration. Rationalizing data management across enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, supply chain management, supplier relationship management, and product lifecycle management systems is only the beginning of the effort. Yet MDM must be addressed if you are to derive any value from GDS. It won't do you any good to learn a new language if you can't then translate the data and information back to your peers.
Technology requirements
Business agility is predicated on the understanding that stakeholders within your enterprise are coordinated. This coordination requires the use of data that is semantically consistent within and across business applications. The more complex (that is, heterogeneous) your IT landscape is, the harder and more costly it will be to achieve that consistency. When agility depends on coordination of business activities across the trading-partner boundary, that complexity requires a new level of attention and IT investment. MDM is the program you need to adopt within the enterprise, and this has to be extended with a GDS program outside your enterprise.
Here are the some of the steps that must be taken to assure that data is synchronized both within the enterprise and with your external partners:
Understand what is needed to support GDS and MDM
Assess your IT projects today to ensure that MDM and GDS requirements are being met, are aligned, and are reconciled
Work with strategic customers and/or suppliers to orchestrate GDS programs and to ensure that these programs exploit the necessary technical and industry standards (such as those laid out by GDSN for retail and consumer products or by the Global Healthcare Exchange for life sciences).
The future of GDS
The extension of master data management to external trading partners will only increase. Gartner predicts that through 2007, 30 percent of Global 1000 enterprises involved in the manufacture, movement, buying, and selling of consumer goods will require external data synchronization with their top 10 trading partners. Furthermore, through 2010, 30 percent of Global 1000 enterprises involved in the manufacture, movement, buying, and selling of non-consumer goods (mining, aerospace and defense, electronics, and chemicals) will participate in external data-synchronization programs with their top 10 trading partners.
An enterprise's agility is significantly inhibited by the struggle to ensure that information can flow seamlessly and continuously across all boundaries. Without that seamless flow of information, business transactions can become bogged down, and enterprises may find themselves needlessly spending time and money to reconcile data discrepancies. MDM overcomes existing limitations and GDS extends this across the value chain; combined, these two programs establish a new discipline for enabling business agility.
This article is printed with permission of Gartner Inc. Copyright 2007.
Weather conditions in central Florida are forecasted to rapidly improve throughout the day as Hurricane Milton spins out into the Atlantic, leaving behind a trail of wind and flood damage.
Nurtured by historically hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the furious storm was stronger than Hurricane Katrina at peak pressure, and registered the lowest barometric pressure—and thus the most destructive storm power—in the Gulf since Hurricane Wilma in 2005, according to analysis by Everstream Analytics.
Fortunately, it weakened slightly to a Category 3 hurricane by the time it made landfall in Siesta Key, just south of Tampa Bay, at 8:30 pm on Wednesday night. However, extremely heavy rainfall totals caused major flooding in the northern portion of that region, soaking Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater. It also triggered storm surge levels of 4-9 feet, and spun off scores of tornadoes. The National Weather Service issued 126 tornado warnings in Florida on October 9 alone, which was the most in Florida history.
Supply chain impacts of that weather are occurring largely where the flooding hit, and have caused major disruptions on port operations, roads, rails, air travel, and interruptions to business operations – possibly for an extended period. The interior sections of Florida will also likely have significant impacts via overland and river/creek flooding and damaging winds (fallen trees), according to Jon Davis, chief meteorologist, Everstream Analytics.
As the weather clears, businesses in the citrus belt of central/southern Florida will also start to measure the damage. At this time of year, most of the citrus remains unharvested on the trees, so the impact on crop yields could be severe. And Davis says that tree damage is always the biggest concern since it impacts production for years.
But the group also warned that the true rebuilding process usually lags behind the initial emergency response. “During the first 48 to 72 hours after a hurricane, most of the work on the ground is focused on search and rescue efforts,” Kathy Fulton, ALAN’s Executive Director, said in a release. “Because of this, ALAN usually doesn’t receive the first substantial wave of donated logistics requests until after that, when humanitarian organizations can get in, conduct their initial assessments, and determine what’s most needed.”
“We know that can be frustrating for organizations that want to do something tangible as soon as possible. But we hope they will still be willing to provide their logistics help when the need arises, whether it’s in a few days, a few months – or even beyond that,” Fulton said. “The devastation Hurricane Milton and its many tornadoes have caused is heartbreaking. We mourn for those who have lost family members, pets and homes, and we are already working hand-in-hand with various non-profit partners to deliver help.”
Editor's note:This article was revised on October 10 to add input from ALAN.
For example, millions of residents and workers in the Tampa region have now left their homes and jobs, heeding increasingly dire evacuation warnings from state officials. They’re fleeing the estimated 10 to 20 feet of storm surge that is forecast to swamp the area, due to Hurricane Milton’s status as the strongest hurricane in the Gulf since Rita in 2005, the fifth-strongest Atlantic hurricane based on pressure, and the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane based on its peak winds, according to market data provider Industrial Info Resources.
Between that mass migration and the storm’s effect on buildings and infrastructure, supply chain impacts could hit the energy logistics and agriculture sectors particularly hard, according to a report from Everstream Analytics.
The Tampa Bay metro area is the most vulnerable area, with the potential for storm surge to halt port operations, roads, rails, air travel, and business operations – possibly for an extended period of time. In contrast to those “severe to potentially catastrophic” effects, key supply chain hubs outside of the core zone of impact—including the Miami metro area along with Jacksonville, FL and Savannah, GA—could also be impacted but to a more moderate level, such as slowdowns in port operations and air cargo, Everstream Analytics’ Chief Meteorologist Jon Davis said in a report.
Although it was recently downgraded from a Category 5 to Category 4 storm, Milton is anticipated to have major disruptions for transportation, in large part because it will strike an “already fragile supply chain environment” that is still reeling from the fury of Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago and the ILA port strike that ended just five days ago and crippled ports along the East and Gulf Coasts, a report from Project44 said.
The storm will also affect supply chain operations at sea, since approximately 74 container vessels are located near the storm and may experience delays as they await safe entry into major ports. Vessels already at the ports may face delays departing as they wait for storm conditions to clear, Project44 said.
On land, Florida will likely also face impacts in the Last Mile delivery industry as roads become difficult to navigate and workers evacuate for safety.
Likewise, freight rail networks are also shifting engines, cars, and shipments out of the path of the storm as the industry continues “adapting to a world shaped by climate change,” the Association of American Railroads (AAR) said. Before floods arrive, railroads may relocate locomotives, elevate track infrastructure, and remove sensitive electronic equipment such as sensors, signals and switches. However, forceful water can move a bridge from its support beams or destabilize it by unearthing the supporting soil, so in certain conditions, railroads may park rail cars full of heavy materials — like rocks and ballast — on a bridge before a flood to weigh it down, AAR said.
The North American robotics market saw a decline in both units ordered (down 7.9% to 15,705 units) and revenue (down 6.8% to $982.83 million) during the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, as North American manufacturers faced ongoing economic headwinds, according to a report from the Association for Advancing Automation (A3).
“Rising inflation and borrowing costs have dampened spending on robotics, with many companies opting to delay major investments,” said Jeff Burnstein, president, A3. “Despite these challenges, the push for operational efficiency and workforce augmentation continues to drive demand for robotics in industries such as food and consumer goods and life sciences, among others. As companies navigate labor shortages and increased production costs, the role of automation is becoming ever more critical in maintaining global competitiveness.”
The downward trend was led by weakness in automotive manufacturing, which traditionally leads the charge in buying robots. In the first half of 2024, automotive OEMs ordered 4,159 units (up 14.4%) but generated revenue of $259.96 million (down 12.0%). The Automotive Components sector was even worse, orders 3,574 units (down 38.8%) for $191.93 million in revenue (down 27.3%). Declines also happened in the Semiconductor & Electronics/Photonics sector and the Plastics & Rubber sector.
On the positive side, Food & Consumer Goods companies ordered 1,173 units (up 85.6%) for $62.84 million in revenue (up 56.2%). This growth reflects the increasing reliance on robotics for efficiency in food processing and packaging as companies seek to address labor shortages and rising costs, A3 said. And the Life Sciences industry ordered 1,007 units (up 47.9%) for revenue of $47.29 million (up 86.7%) as it continued its reliance on robotics for efficiency and precision.
The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico are brewing up another massive storm this week that is on track to smash into the western coast of Florida by Wednesday morning, bringing a consecutive round of storm surge and damaging winds to the storm-weary state.
Before reaching the U.S., Hurricane Milton will rake the northern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with dangerous weather. But hurricane watches are already in effect for parts of Florida, which could see heavy rainfall, flash and urban flooding, and moderate to major river floods, according to forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As it revs its massive engines with fuel from the historically warm Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Milton could possibly hit Tampa as a Category 5 storm, according to the FEWSION Project at Northern Arizona University, which tracks supply chains throughout the country.
With that much power, Milton could shut down the port and seriously disrupt the fuel supply into western and central Florida, which could then hinder recovery efforts. That’s because fuel supplies for much of Florida, especially central Florida, arrive from Texas and Louisiana through the Port of Tampa. That means that anyone who depends on generators or fuel for critical functions should plan for an extended period without access to fuel. And recovery crews and logisticians should consider bringing their own fuel when responding to the storm, FEWSION said.
One of those disaster recovery efforts will be led by nonprofit group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), which is already mobilizing its forces for Hurricane Milton, even as it devotes other energy to the Hurricane Helene response. “In an ideal world we’d have plenty of time to focus all of our efforts on Hurricane Helene clean-up and recovery,” Kathy Fulton, ALAN’s Executive Director, said in a release. “But in the real world, major hurricanes don’t always wait for their turn. As a result, we are officially activating for Hurricane Milton.”
In the meantime, many weary residents of the region are thinking of moving to another part of the country instead of getting hit by vicious storms several times a year. Nearly one-third (32%) of U.S. residents aged 18-34 say they’re reconsidering where they want to move in the future after seeing or hearing about the damage caused by Hurricane Helene, according to a survey commissioned by real estate brokerage Redfin.
“Scores of Americans flocked to the Sun Belt during the pandemic because remote work allowed them to take advantage of the region’s relatively low cost of living. Some thought Appalachia was insulated from hurricane risk, not realizing that the area is prone to flooding and that hurricanes can sometimes cause flash flooding far away from the ocean,” Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather said in a release. “Americans are beginning to realize that nowhere is truly immune to the impacts of climate change, and we’re starting to see that impact where people want to live—even people who haven’t experienced a catastrophic weather event firsthand.”
The report is based on a commissioned survey conducted by Ipsos on Oct. 2-3, fielded to 1,005 U.S. adults. After making landfall in Florida in late September, Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across Appalachia, becoming the deadliest storm to hit mainland America in almost two decades. In North Carolina, the death toll has surpassed 100 and the city of Asheville has been devastated.
Shippers and carriers at ports along the East and Gulf coasts today are working through a backlog of stranded containers stuck on ships at sea, now that dockworkers and port operators have agreed to a tentative deal that ends the dockworkers strike.
In the meantime, U.S. importers and exporters face a mountain of shipping boxes that are now several days behind schedule. By the latest estimate from Everstream Analytics, the number of cargo boxes on ships floating outside affected ports has slightly decreased by 20,000 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs), dropping to 386,000 from its highpoint of 406,000 yesterday.
To chip away at the problem, some facilities like the Port of Charleston have announced extended daily gate hours to give shippers and carriers more time each day to shuffle through the backlog. And Georgia Ports Authority likewise announced plans to stay open on Saturday and Sunday, saying, “We will be offering weekend gates to help restore your supply chain fluidity.”
But they face a lot of work; the number of container ships waiting outside of U.S. Gulf and East Coast ports on Friday morning had decreased overnight to 54, down from a Thursday peak of 59. Overall, with each day of strike roughly needing about one week to clear the backlog, the 3-day all-out strike will likely take minimum three weeks to return to normal operations at U.S. ports, Everstream said.