Digital Supply Chain Planning in Chemicals

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Leveraging the digitalization of supply chain planning, chemical companies can address several industry-specific challenges and make an important leap to becoming competitive digital businesses.

To realize this game-changing opportunity, chemical companies should evaluate six key digital supply chain planning capabilities and develop them according to their unique position in the market, using an agile and scalable model. Since operational efficiency is the prevailing value lever across the supply chains of all chemical industry segments, these capabilities can improve profitability. As such, the organizations that master the right mix of digital supply chain capabilities will be best positioned to innovate, compete and succeed in a fully digital business future.

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To help gain an edge over the competition, there are six key digital supply chain capabilities that chemical companies should master.

Demand Sensing: Advanced analysis of structured and unstructured data to identify relevant patterns and predict demand development.
Supply Chain Collaboration: Interlock with customers, suppliers and other partners in the value chain, leveraging technology to exchange information.
Dynamic Inventory Management: Continuous inventory parameter analysis and adjustment to optimize safety and buffer stocks in a multi-stage supply network.

Profit, Sales & Operations Planning: Proactive balancing of demand and supply constraints considering possible business scenarios and their impact on profitability.
Supply Chain Resilience: Monitor and proactively manage supply chain risks to improve the organization’s ability to cope with unexpected, disruptive events.
Supply Chain Control Tower: Integration of the data visibility, analytics and execution layer as a platform across all supply chain functions to improve flexibility and responsiveness.

Current digital maturity, industry segment and business strategy will dictate a company’s path to digitalization. Accenture suggests four steps to get started on establishing the right mix of digital supply chain capabilities.

STEP 1

Define digital priorities

Select digital opportunities based on business imperatives.
STEP 2

Roadmap the journey

Evaluate and define business and technology requirements.
STEP 3

Execute the roadmap

Use agile methodology to allow for incremental implementation.
STEP 4

Scale up capabilities

Adopt a shared service model to maximize flexibility and scalability.