While working on adding agility to the supply chain operations, it's always a good idea to first take into account the least agile aspects. Agile supply chains allow their users to react to the realities of the market while mitigating adverse financial impacts. But, yes, management is going to love an agile idea of the supply chain. How to create agility in the supply chain is the question here?

Receiving the most out of emerging technologies for substantial gains in efficiency is a definite key to victory. The concern for any company trying to raise and speed up its abilities in the supply chain technology is what strategy will enable it to achieve the goal? For instance, Agile enables Braskem to embrace significant innovations in performance while working in small, fast increments that produce quick and concrete results with minimal risk. Specifications and solutions developed with Agile software development strategy through both the joint effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their end-users. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development, fast delivery, and continuous improvement, and promotes rapid and flexible change response.

Six Agile initiatives were initiated in parallel by Braskem's North America supply chain team, experimenting quickly with possible solutions. One such effort was to harness Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to streamline operations of shipping and stock picking. Inventory inaccuracy in a pilot warehouse was removed within eight weeks by the bot-based solution.

Few Agile Companies: CoActivation, LPS, SoftEd

The bot-based solution has been introduced into four other terminals, automating 50 percent of all rail car shipments and removing 80 percent of the computer tasks of warehouse operators. This astonished shipping staff from tedious transactional activities directing them to concentrate more on exclusions that require human attention. This also liberated the ability to meet unique customer needs and take on higher volumes of work as the industry grows. The cross-functional Agile teams are also successfully addressing business process issues.

Supply chain deserves timely, precise product demand estimates. Operations require current inventory accessibility information to begin the activity of the shipment tendering.  In reaction, the Agile team chose to pursue a simple minimum viable product that guarantees that each role has at its fingertips the information it needs. As a result, supply chain activity has become more frequently revised and the software is more affordable and accessible, relatively simple tweaks in the company's established planning software given access to much of the focused information.

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