Visibility & Collaboration
A complex story...
End-to-end visibility has become the one of top 3 strategic objectives of supply chain management. Yet only 6% of the firms have complete visibility (GEODIS, Supply Chain Worldwide Survey, 2017). The lack of visibility is often explained by the complex organisation of the supply chain eco-system, such as;
- the involvement of many stakeholders all having a piece of the data puzzle
- the mistrust between players to share data
- the lack of data standards
- interoperability between systems
- data silos within companies/organisations
... with multiple facets
The ePIcenter project works on all ‘aspects’ of visibility. It does not only demonstrate technological solutions to digitize the supply chain and create end-to-end visibility. It also works on selecting the appropriate standards and establishing strong governance rules and models that offer stakeholders security and control over their own data.
“In a world of personal connectivity, smartphones and GPS, it is surprising that companies still ask themselves: Where is my stuff?”
A layered approach
To do this it defines an innovative concept of inner and outer visibility layers supporting real-time communication between supply chain stakeholders whilst guaranteeing secure and controlled data sharing. This results in data sharing mechanisms that enable real-time optimisation of the supply chain and synchromodality. The integration of new technologies and concepts in logistics (e.g. modular containers, hyperloop,…) within this digital data layer will also be investigated ensuring that these promising technologies and concepts are not excluded from the synchromodality paradigm.
