Supply Chain Transparency and Collaboration with the wayCloud Platform

Planning and controlling your production with the Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) software wayRTS (Real Time Simulation) achieves a high degree of transparency and adherence to deadlines. However, in complex multi-tier value chains, there are factors that are not part of the company itself. Planning-relevant information from suppliers is not available in due time and must be obtained with considerable effort in some cases. It would also be desirable to keep customers up-to-date on progress and get easy feedback with no extra effort. In order to further optimize supply chain management, external partners must be involved. And that’s exactly what the wayCloud platform offers.

Incorporate customers, control suppliers

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform wayCloud allows you to connect as many customers and suppliers as you like with the apps tailored to the specific use cases. It provides partners with secure, precisely defined insight into their own planning results and serves as a convenient communication platform for coordination. The result: Any information is shared easily and securely with all partners involved in the process. The transparency gained this way increases the predictability of logistics processes. The wayCloud Platform Apps are ideal for demand and capacity matching, task management, communicating project and order progress, and calculating greenhouse gas emissions along the supply chain. Collaboration on the platform increases delivery reliability and delivery capability, potential supply bottlenecks can be avoided at an early stage, and emission reduction potential can be identified. The various functions can be selected and booked as individual apps. You only pay and share with your partners what you actually use.

The wayCloud Platform improves collaboration with suppliers and customers. The cloud service is a convenient way to clarify open questions directly using the data from the planning software and, if necessary, additional documents. Media breaks and duplicate data storage are further reduced in the interest of digital transformation.

In addition to providing applications for collaboration, valantic leverages the flexibility and scalability of the wayCloud platform to provide additional capabilities with large computation requirements. Users can take advantage of these as needed without having to keep the corresponding IT capacities available.

With the wayDDO app provided via the wayCloud platform, the wayRTS user can exploit state-of-the-art algorithms to automate and optimize scheduling data. Historical data from the ERP as well as information from the wayRTS material master form the basis of the automatic evaluation.
wayDDO helps you

The availability of the necessary data and the individual parameters are worked out during valantic’s integrated process and IT consulting. The aim is to achieve the best possible demand and inventory management.

The Demand Planning Automation app uses state-of-the-art algorithms and AI to provide forecasts for the S&OP process. A challenge for longer-term forecasting is the choice of the appropriate statistical method – wayDDO offers all currently leading technologies.
In valantic’s process and IT consulting, the appropriate calculation methods are defined jointly. From this point on, the ideal forecasting procedure is selected automatically according to the individual reference number, with the best parameterization in each case to minimize the forecast error.
Forecasts can be provided on both the primary and secondary requirements level or on the product group level. wayDDO is a fully integrated solution: The forecast requirements are made available automatically as planned requirements in wayRTS, where they form their own forecast scenarios.
What is calculated this way based on historical data in the cloud fits into an integrated S&OP process with wayRTS. This is where the automatic forecast and sales estimates are coordinated.
By using wayDDO, planners can be sure to always be up-to-date with the statistics software. They will be using the most powerful algorithms for their forecasts and automatically receive high-quality planning bases.

In a globalized world, companies are confronted with a continuously increasing number of customers, suppliers and product variants. As a result, the complexity and requirements posed to supply chain management (SCM) are increasing. To maintain competitiveness and profitability, companies are highly dependent on a holistic SCM and the mastery of the associated complexity – internally, across company boundaries and along entire value chains.

If, for example, a supply bottleneck occurs somewhere in the world, the entire supply chain can temporarily come to a standstill or even collapse. Even many minor incidents can bring sand into the gears of supply chains: a traffic jam on the highway, a communication error between plants or a lengthy machine breakdown. Wherever companies are heavily dependent on the smooth running of all processes, there is even the threat of production downtimes and losses of millions in the event of an emergency. IT-supported transparency within the company, let alone across company boundaries to upstream stages of the supply chain, is often inadequate.

valantic’s wayCloud Platform builds bridges: As an innovative, Web-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, it connects all partners along the entire supply chain via a simple interface. In doing so, a multitude of relevant information is exchanged, which offers advantages to all parties involved both in critical situations and in regular operations: improved early detection of bottlenecks, fast and aligned coordination in case of a crisis as well as improved planning reliability and efficiency gains ultimately increase the competitiveness of the entire supply chain.

Globalization and ever-increasing customer requirements put pressure on companies to deliver faster and faster while reducing costs for logistics, storage and transport. The resulting increased complexity in one’s own company and along entire supply chains not only leads to growing intransparency, but also entails coordination efforts and loss of control. This contradicts core objectives of Supply Chain Management (SCM), which aims for supply chains being more efficient, flexible and reactive, while at the same time both costs and efforts should be made transparent and systematically reduced.

In order to achieve these goals nevertheless, innovative and tailor-made IT solutions are required to bring together all relevant information. These solutions must not only focus on the own organization, but on the entire supply chain including all stakeholders – and if possible in real time. Not least for these reasons, the trend is moving more and more towards cloud solutions or web-based Software-as-a-Service platforms such as valantic’s wayCloud Platform.

Immediate reaction in exceptional situations

Many heterogeneous, monolithic IT systems, including SCM and ERP systems, are usually in use along the value chains. In exceptional cases, such as machine failures, immediate notifications and a clear flow of information are essential. This is the only way to quickly analyze and evaluate the existing situation in order to initiate and coordinate suitable countermeasures. What happens if the affected companies and their systems do not communicate with each other at all or only in a very delayed manner?

In such cases, the affected stages of the supply chain are often notified about a potentially critical situation far too late. As a result, attempts are hectically made, usually bilaterally, to obtain the most necessary information by telephone and e-mail in order to initiate emergency measures and to identify a responsible contact person. Unfortunately, a coordinated, efficient counter-reaction usually falls by the wayside.

Direct questions: Do you know your entire supply chain and all the neuralgic processes? Can you easily identify where capacity bottlenecks are imminent and where relevant stocks are kept? Do you know at which points potentials and efficiency gains could be realized?

The first challenge in creating transparency along the value chain is to consolidate all processes, data and figures within your own company in a clear and always up-to-date picture with the help of suitable IT systems. In a second step, especially against the background of increasingly interlinked and globally positioned supply chains, information should be provided, shared and analyzed with all relevant partners using suitable systems – only in this way a holistic view can be guaranteed.

There are only a few systems that, like valantic’s wayCloud Platform, are able to systematically combine all relevant data. This can be done manually via upload (xlsx- or csv-format) or via an automated connection via web interfaces (REST-APIs). In both ways, the structures and material flow in supply chains can be made transparent and analyzed in real time.

As a web-based solution, the wayCloud Platform can be implemented very quickly and provides a reliable analysis of the status quo. Therefore, the software is ideally suited to achieve coordination and solution finding in the value chain in critical supply situations. Joint measures include additional extra tours, temporary shortage management and the deliberate shifting of orders.

Also in regular operations, the wayCloud Platform shows its strengths when it comes to transparency. Regardless of whether in your own company or along the supply chain, capacity bottlenecks, overstocks and demand fluctuations can be detected. Paired with suitable key figures and as a result of the continuous monitoring, early warnings of shortcomings and potentials for efficiency increases are identified. But which key figures are the right ones here?

After consolidating all data, the structured monitoring of your supply chains with the help of suitable key figures let you keep an overview at all times. In this way, bottlenecks, exceptions and risks can be identified at an early stage. Bad surprises and enormous costs (e.g. due to missing parts or extra tours) can thus be avoided. Especially in critical situations, but also during regular operation, communication is based on a common view and a single point of truth. Dashboards show the current situation in real time at a glance.

valantic’s wayCloud Platform offers the right key figures and reports for almost every application. Cross-tier stock ranges, capacitive utilization, supply bottlenecks and much more. You have the choice: meaningful standard reports? Or a maximum of flexibility? Whatever you decide on: The common data base of the supply chain partners enables real-time visualization and updating of all key figures and thus always a holistic view of the current situation, future developments and analyses of the past. In this way, you gradually increase the competitiveness and performance of your entire supply chain.

Inter-company transparency is the necessary, robust basis for comprehensive planning and optimal decision-making. Because information is shared directly with partners and work is done using the same database, common efficiency potential can be exploited and the performance of the entire supply chain increased.

Integrated planning and control of your supply chain with the wayCloud Platform guarantees you smooth processes, on-time and on-budget fulfillment of customer requirements, greater efficiency and the potential to significantly reduce your costs. In this context, the wayCloud Platform supports you both in the tactical/operational control of your production as well as in the strategic planning of contingents and capacities. Once customers and suppliers have been integrated, immediate insights into all relevant processes within the supply chain can be shared across all stages. In this way you protect yourself and your partners from wrong or suboptimal decisions and avoidable costs due to inadequate information flows. The definition, coordination and implementation of measures is supported by corresponding collaboration modules directly in the wayCloud Platform.

With the wayCloud Platform, you can map inventory ranges to the material number level for all integrated suppliers with central monitoring. Incoming material flows and inventories in your suppliers’ outgoing goods are allocated according to your requirements (delivery calls or orders). Ranges are generated, which also consider delivery times and defined minimum targets. If the inventory ranges drop below a specified threshold or if there is a supply shortage due to a late arrival, you can see this from the appropriate KPI right away. You can react quickly and communicate proactively with your suppliers. You also know whether there is sufficient inventory at your suppliers and you can request a special transport if necessary. Since the wayCloud Platform also works for all partners, you can create this transparency for your customers and ensure that they generate sufficient inventory ranges with their deliveries and inventories in outgoing goods and can satisfy all needs.

This increases the reliability of material supply along the entire supply chain, makes any bottlenecks visible early on, and improves communication and coordination thanks to common data stocks.

In order to make not just the short-term supply situation transparent to suppliers and customers, coordinate and monitor it, there is so-called delivery capacity coverage in the wayCloud Platform. You can use this function to work with your partners to synchronize and plan medium- and long-term demands and delivery capacities on the monthly level.

For example, your customer provides you with a preview of his needs on the monthly level and would like to know if you can fulfill these. You can simply transfer delivery capacities on the material number level, also with flexibility upward and downward, to the relevant partner. Both you and your customer see immediately whether delivery capacities are sufficient. Meaningful KPIs and a graphic presentation of the data clarify the situation.

Another example is the planning of your demands with regard to your suppliers. They have already entered delivery capacities for each material and every month in the coming year in wayCloud Platform. Now, you can compare secondary demands, which are calculated using your customers’ demands. Having all this information in one place puts you in a position to plan your delivery calls so that they are appropriate for secondary demands and the promised delivery capacities. You can react early on to deviations and, for example, smooth out demand peaks or request additional delivery capacities.

With the order list, you can communicate orders, delivery calls, and other demands to your suppliers. They can either confirm quantities and dates or communicate new date and quantity proposals. In case of changes or confirmations, the status of the affected data records is updated and written back to your leading ERP system if necessary. This way, you make agreements via a single platform and maintain an overview at all times. Agreements that are otherwise made on the telephone or in other ways are documented centrally on the platform and can be viewed and are transparent for all participants. The order list is therefore an ideal instrument for daily cooperation between customers and suppliers.

Use the integrated collaboration possibilities, such as the list of open issues, in order to prioritize, categorize, work through, and document tasks efficiently. You can create various lists for different projects and partners.

The lists can be used internally and in cooperation with your customers and suppliers. Here, as many external partners can be invited to cooperate as you wish, also in the form of guest users if they are not themselves active on the system. Within a few minutes, you can start a new initiative for coordinating and documenting tasks. On request, you will be notified via e-mail of changes to your tasks, so you will remain informed about the current state of affairs at all times. You can incorporate additional information such as files and screenshots easily and monitor progress with appropriate KPIs (e.g. adherence to deadline).

Network across several levels with your partners, from parts suppliers to end product manufacturers. Thanks to the exchange of data, such as primary demands, backlog information, and inventories, inventory ranges are calculated considering the entire supply chain. This is how bottleneck components and critical paths can be identified, inventories within the chain optimized, and bull-whip effects prevented.

Get even more detailed information about your global supply chain and key risks associated with it with Prewave’s risk intelligence platform. Prewave analyzes the supplier information of the network constructed in the wayCloud Platform and creates risk profiles based on historical data. Prewave is therefore able to generate alerts, in many cases even before the event actually occurs. The combination of the material flow mapped in the wayCloud platform and Prewave’s risk information provides a significantly better data basis for making essential supply chain decisions.

Are you curious about the wayCloud Platform as an effective solution for supply chain transparency and collaboration? In our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) you can find out how you can optimize your supply chain management processes in detail with the wayCloud Platform, reduce costs and effort and how quickly the open service platform can be implemented.

The wayCloud Platform can be set up independently online within a short time. This allows you to immediately integrate first supply chain partners, upload initial data and create quick reports.

We would like to introduce the wayCloud Platform to you personally.