On October 19^th, aioneers will be presenting the AIO Supply Chain Command Center (AIO SCCC) to the German Logistics Congress for the first time. This is a major event for the company, providing the chance to exhibit the full extent of three years’ work.

Whatever the reasons, we can’t seem to keep up with the panic caused by items disappearing off the shelves. It’s like Black Friday all year round, except people are fighting over baby formula, toilet paper, or bags of flour. As a company, what can you possibly do to avoid the next shortage being your product? 

Every organization has components, commodities, and even finished products on stock. With these, they ride waves of high demand or supplier constraints. Inventories such as these constitute a huge management task, with ambiguous variables and high stakes. In fact, the effort needed to succeed in managing inventory is often so high, so specialized, that many larger companies seek external help. This is where inventory optimization companies come in. 

• Das Supply Chain Forum wird am 21. Juni 2022 sowohl in der Manufaktur Mannheim als auch online stattfinden.
• Die Veranstaltung wird von aioneers, einem Mannheimer Start-up im Bereich Supply Chain, ausgerichtet
• Tickets sind ab sofort über supplychainforum.org erhältlich.

All supply chains are lagging behind their optimal performance. This is what we call the supply chain performance gap. With the first nine articles of this series, we analyzed the issues of Supply Chains lagging behind their potential. Today we will close the journey and ask ourselves what the characteristics of a high-performing Supply Chain are and how we can make a difference. In 2016 the magazine Inbound Logistics asked several CEOs and Supply Chain executives: "What are the characteristics of a great supply chain?". These are the success factors, as well as possible reasons for failure. 

Today’s internal complexity article concludes the insight into the eight root causes of the supply chain performance gap. Internal complexity means complexity resulting from inside the company such as organizational structure, type of organization, number and types of processes, internal and external interfaces, corporate culture, business activities (e.g., product and service development), and mergers and acquisitions. The good news is that internal complexity can be directly influenced and reduced through different actions, from executive decisions on business and corporate structure to processes, personnel, and products.

In today's globalized world, regulatory complexity is one of the root causes to lacking supply chain performance. This article presents the sixth of eight root causes we defined for supply chains lagging behind their potential. You will find an overview of all root causes in the first post of our ten-part series. For more details, jump to the related article. 

Today, we give you an insight into our 5th root cause: the complexity of supplier network. In the previous articles, we already addressed the root causes of product portfolio complexity, speed of innovation, new types of competition, and multi-channel sales complexity.

The complexity of supply networks is determined by the diversity of supplier relationships and their changes over time. The main drivers for the diversity of the network are the number of suppliers involved and the topology of the network, which is expressed in the number of levels, the degree of networking, and the types of relationships. Examples of supplier relationships are direct material suppliers, logistics services providers, contract manufacturers, engineering contractors, equipment vendors, and professional services providers. In addition to the structural complexity, the geographical location and thus political and social structures have an additional influence on the complexity of the supplier network.

This article will analyze the complexity resulting from the coexistence of several different sales channels. It is precisely this complexity that continues to be the cause of supply chain performance issues. As a basis, you can check the previous articles from the 10-part series about the root causes of the supply chain performance gap that started with a summary and headed right to the root causes - product portfolio complexity, speed of innovation, and new types of competition.

Today we can observe new types of competition emerging in established market environments closely related to business model innovation and the use of new technologies. Thus, the existing players need to deal with new types of competition to sustain or even strengthen their position. Consequently, "new types of competition" are considered as the emergence of innovative approaches to gain competitive advantages or market share. This is achieved either by generating new customer needs or by better serving existing ones.