Supply Chain Invisibility Challenges in India

India’s massive economic growth has been decelerating for some time now. The Indian economy shrank
23.9% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020, much worse than market forecasts of an 18.3% drop.
Moreover, consumer confidence decreased to 63.70 points in the second quarter of 2020, from 85.60
points in the first quarter.

Our country is conquering a year of uncertainty. Supply chain leaders must understand the challenges and
adapt themselves to overcome them.

The term supply chain visibility relates to understanding what is going on in a supply chain. Despite its
deceptively simple meaning, it is not readily achievable. Over the decades, many organizations have
experienced unplanned supply chain interruptions caused by abnormal weather events, natural disasters,
factory fires, and other supply chain disruption forms.

The textbook definition of Supply chain visibility (SCV) is that it is the indicator of the trackability or
traceability of product orders and physical product shipments from the production source to their
destination. It also includes logistics activities and transport and the state of events and milestones that
occur before and during transit.

The four key entities that attribute the supply chain are:
1. Products — goods or entities, demanded or supplied.
2. Facilities — Stations where products are made, stored, sold, or consumed.
3. Vehicles — mechanisms to move products between facilities to meet demand.
4. Routes — paths that are taken by vehicles to move products between facilities.

All that goes into the supply chain processes revolve around these four entities. Higher visibility ensures
smooth interactions and functioning of these entities, conclusively rewarding optimized supply chain
capabilities.

The principal characteristic of a high visibility supply chain is the ability to efficiently establish the position
of all elements of the supply chain, on the whole, and the ability to investigate to get more insight.

From the manufacturing perspective, It should be possible to discover that all manufacturing inputs are
ready, either in stock or pre-planned deliveries. Ideally, there needs to be a level Of integration connecting
the company's suppliers' and logistics operators’ systems to confirm any order's location and status.

If something goes astray, as it inescapably will, a high visibility supply chain will immediately signal that
there is a problem. With the integration with suppliers' systems, this should provide sufficient time to
determine and fix the issue or make alternative arrangements.

Importance and Benefits for Highly visible supply chain

Most modern supply chains are incredibly complex. In a 2017 global supply chain survey of high-level
global supply chain professionals conducted by logistic company Geodis, 70% remarked that supply chain
complexity was an essential issue with regard to supply chain visibility. It was unusual that only 6% of those
surveyed believed their company had obtained full visibility all over the internal, inbound, and outbound
aspects of their supply chain. Many companies studied were consistent in their view that improving supply
chain visibility was as essential to the organization as product availability and on-time delivery. As an
implication of the value of supply chain visibility, those companies with full supply chain visibility had
accomplished, on average, increased revenue related to turnover than those with limited visibility.
Some of the key benefits of having higher visibility of the company's supply chain are
 Sustainable Supply Chain Functions
 Higher Profitability
 Improved Efficiency and Productivity
 Building Customer Trust

Today’s consumers are socially conscious and suspicious of big businesses, and they will not stop moving
forward to more sustainable companies. One company's logistics operation, especially if those operations
do not follow sustainable practices, could push customers further toward the competitors.

Supply Chain Visibility is more important than ever in these unprecedented times. The ‘2020 Supply
Chain Visibility Report’ based on Reuters Events and eye for transport (eft), answers how fundamental
challenges to higher visibility impact the supply chain operations. 

Capabilities Vs. Adoption

The report suggests 60% of manufacturers and retailers say they currently have end-to-end supply chain
visibility. 
The restraining factor is not technology but the lack of industry collaboration that remains the most
significant barrier.

Transparency often refers to the act of disclosing the information to trading partners, shareholders,
customers, consumers, and regulatory bodies. This practice benefits all parties in the supply chain but
targets consumers and end-users of an enterprise's product.

Even though 83% of retailers and manufacturers intimated that sharing data would improve visibility and
planning, the lack of collaboration persists. The lack of cooperation can, at least partially, be credited to a
lack of trust and companies’ reluctance to share what they might consider proprietary information.

Risk management

Business survival is influenced not only by ensuring revenues exceed costs. It must also include thoughtful
consideration of all possible risks to the business and planning to avoid or mitigate the consequences.

When the survey enquired retailers and manufacturers if they have a fault-tolerant risk management
process, less than 60% agreed, while almost 65% of logistics service providers (LSPs) said they have one.

The multi-tiered, global positioning of today’s supply chains makes risk management both more difficult
and critical.

The interdependencies between all stages of the global supply chain have been appropriately exhibited
during the COVID-19 pandemic. There needs to be a novel retrospective on risk mitigation.

Disruptive technologies

We all have an apprehension of change, and disruptive technologies sound scary. That reluctance may be
partially responsible for the finding that 22% of retailers and manufacturers have no focus on
implementing new disruptive technologies, and 50% are doing this only on an ad hoc basis. However,
disruptive technologies such as IoT-based sensor networks, machine learning (ML), and artificial
intelligence (AI) can be vital tools for anticipating and responding to supply chain interruptions.
Perhaps more surprising, given the massive increase in online shopping during this at-home period, is the
lack of e-commerce fulfilment strategies reported by retailers, manufacturers and LSPs

The report found that only 23% of retail and manufacturing respondents have an e-commerce strategy in
operation entering 2020, with another 40% indicating they expect to have one over the next two to five
years. LSPs are slightly ahead, with 34% having strategies in place and 72% in total expecting to have one
over the next five years.

It is time that critical administrators across the supply chain adapt to more transparent information
exchange and disruptive technologies, all the while safeguarding the business through effective risk
mitigation strategies.