Ever-increasing numbers of products, suppliers, channels and geographies, coupled with a lack of real-time visibility, are hampering high-tech manufacturers supply chains and hurting their bottom lines, reports an Infosys/Microsoft survey. More than 60 per cent of manufacturers reported a supply chain disruption and said it took hours or longer show up in their systems. The Infosys/Microsoft High-Tech Manufacturing Supply Chain Survey 2009, focused on high-tech manufacturing firms in Germany, Japan and the United States.
Vice president and US head of manufacturing at Infosys Technologies, Sanjay Jalona, said: Complexity is one issue, but supply chain professionals often have poor visibility across the enterprise and its trading partners and lack the tools to make informed decisions. Data thats captured manually or is scattered across multiple systems must be gathered together and manipulated in order to gain real insight.
US high-tech and electronics industry solutions director at Microsoft, Drew Gude, said: Due to the need to communicate in real time along the supply chain, the industry will begin to adopt more collaboration tools such as instant messaging, social networking and VoIP. The key will be managing these tools in a secure way, while still allowing real-time collaboration to occur among trading partners and across geographies.