The recipe for food and beverage supply chain success
Today’s food and beverage (F&B) repackaging businesses face a host of challenges, from constant disruptions to complex, multifaceted supply chains. To navigate these obstacles effectively, they need a holistic, real-time view of their end-to-end supply chain operations. This requires F&B repackaging businesses to leverage advanced technologies and data-driven strategies to optimise their supply chains.
The repackaging challenge
The process of repackaging involves sending multiple, varied finished products to repackaging facilities to produce retail-ready multi-packed products. Traditional planning optimisation tools often fall short because they assume an unlimited supply and can fail to account for constraints like labour, carrier capacity, and production capacity. This oversight can lead to significant inefficiencies when shortages occur, causing businesses to scramble to realign their inventories and optimise production plans reactively.
At the heart of overcoming these challenges and achieving the smarter, more agile, and robust supply chains which can predict and mitigate disruptions in real-time, are five key ingredients: reliability, flexibility, transparency, connectivity, and data-driven decision-making.
However, for each of these vital pieces of the pie to come together, organisations must first look at how they can leverage their data.
The power of data and AI
F&B organisations, therefore, must be able to access, harmonise, and gain real-time insights from their data. This calls for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
By implementing connective tissue technology, like InterSystems Supply Chain Orchestrator, built on a smart data fabric architecture, organisations can leverage AI capabilities to augment human decision-making, enabling disruption to be predicted and opportunities to be seized in real time to optimise their repackaging operations.
It is also faster and easier to gain predictive and prescriptive actionable insights. This can help to optimise demand sensing and forecasting, streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and gain a competitive edge.
F&B organisations can then turn their attention to ensuring their supply chain features these five essential ingredients:
1. Reliability
F&B organisations need supply chains they can rely on no matter what disruption may head their way. Access to real-time data and insights from across the supply chain will help decision-makers to see, understand, optimise, and act. With systems fed with clean, trusted data, businesses will be able to build out production plans based on true forecast and supply to maximise fill rate without resorting to manual methods.
2. Flexibility
Investing in data platform technology like InterSystems Supply Chain Orchestrator that leverages embedded advanced technologies like AI and ML and offers self-service access to analytics will help F&B organisations to obtain flexible, agile supply chains. It creates the opportunity to increase automation and gain intelligent insights to accelerate decision-making and drive efficiencies. This will help them achieve rapid adaptation to any changes in demand, logistics disruptions, or business priorities, leading to increased customer satisfaction and higher revenue.
3. Transparency
Real-time end-to-end visibility of the supply chain across all inventory locations, labour availability, carrier capacities, demand and supply forecasting plans and geo/political disruptions are key to creating optimal supply chain plans. This transparency can help optimise repackaging production plans to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, so businesses can make informed decisions that have an immediate and positive impact and solve potential upheaval before it becomes a problem.
4. Connectivity
Many supply chain organisations struggle with disparate systems, making achieving that much-needed holistic view a major challenge. Connective tissue technology gives F&B organisations access to consistent trusted data that is harmonised and normalised from disparate sources. This will not only give them the desired connectivity, but will also help with the reliability, flexibility, and transparency of the supply chain, and move them closer to becoming data-driven.
5. Data-driven decision-making
Access to real-time data and insights will empower organisations to make informed decisions, rather than relying on gut feeling. A data-driven approach to decision-making will help to ensure actions can be taken based on trusted evidence, leading to increased efficiency and optimisation in an unconstrained supply chain environment.
Additionally, the use of self-service analytics can put those evidence-based decision-making capabilities into the hands of those on the frontline. Coming up with real-time accurate decisions, considering the myriad of supply chain constraints, is what businesses lack today and desperately need.
Transforming supply chains with technology
Embracing AI and ML technologies and integrating the five ingredients for supply chain success will enable F&B repackaging businesses to become more responsive to market changes and optimise their supply chain operations. This evolution to intelligent, agile, and efficient supply chains will not only help F&B organisations navigate today's complexities but also thrive amidst future challenges and opportunities. By prioritising technology and data-driven strategies, these businesses can ensure sustained growth and resilience in an unpredictable market.
Discover more about how InterSystems Supply Chain Orchestrator can help.
