Organisations now have a range of business and IT processes to call upon as they attempt to create seamless supply chain integration.

Rather than holding stock in expensive warehouse space, firms are looking to make the most of innovative technology to speed up logistics processes, source products direct from suppliers and push final goods quickly to customers.

Successful supply chain management is all about overseeing multiples: multiple shopping channels; multiple technologies, including radio frequency identification (RFID); and multiple sourcing locations, such as the Far East.

Maintaining consistency across multiple channels, technologies and locations is a considerable task.

Take retailer Argos, who has seen its product line increase from 7,700 to more than 18,000 during the past seven years.

As highlighted in this month’s Computing Business cover story, Argos’ supply chain director Steve Melton says providing the goods for a broad range of lines requires a firm hand.

“We have been working with key suppliers, particularly those in the Far East, to reduce order quantities and reduce lead times,” he says.

RFID technology can help IT leaders track and trace deliveries when errors occur, but it remains a pipe dream for most.

Too expensive to tag all but the big-ticket objects, RFID remains associated with the bulk movement of goods, rather than individual items.

With more external sourcing now taking place, anything that can improve item tracing might be sensible.

The EU-wide number of dangerous products reported on a week-by-week basis this year is up 43 per cent, with 48 per cent of them involving Chinese products.

However, strong supply chain management is not just about controlling external suppliers. You will also need to take charge of internal systems and ensure that staff are not scared by innovative IT.

Supply chain processes traditionally over-rely on acquired knowledge, a process that can leave a firm exposed when key individuals leave an organisation.
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is allowing organisations to re-use resources on-demand in a modularised fashion.

Some firms are already taking a lead here, illustrating how enterprise resource planning and electronic point of sales systems can form part of a holistic logistics system.

The innovative use of IT should mean the days when the supply chain was the most intractable leg of the product delivery journey are increasingly distant memories.

Read the Computing Business blog: http://knowledge.computing.co.uk