Digital Supply Chain
Predicting supply chain disruptions before they turn into disasters.
The Problem
With the pace of change we experience today, global supply chain systems have never been more elaborate with requirements to operate at extreme velocity. On the other hand, supply chain disruptions are surging due to severe weather events, increased trade tensions, policy uncertainties, new compliance requirements, sudden changes in demand/supply needs, labor shifts and now, pandemics.
Businesses need a new approach to how they acquire, modify, review and perform using supply chain data, in real-time, to proactively reduce disruptions while improving service.
76% of companies experienced at least one major supply chain disruption in the past 12 months.
Value Hypothesis
Supply chain owners and global manufacturers face substantial cost overruns and customer satisfaction issues due to supply chain disruptions. Their jobs are also characterized by constant, chaotic fire-drills. These leaders are actively searching for ways to reduce the probability and impact of any disruptions by using an intuitive user experience that allows them to absorb, interpret and act on these disruptions without losing valuable time and money. This will effectively lead to improved customer satisfaction due to improved customer order fill rates and reduced operating costs due to "situationally aware” decision making abilities. Companies that can improve their supply chain responsiveness will surpass their competition, leading to enhanced market share and profitability.
Inception Artifacts
User Interface (MVP)
Scenario Mode
User Interface (MVP)
Recommendation Mode
The Solution
Cognizant Digital Supply Chain platform offers the benefit of reducing the time it takes to respond to any supply chain events from weeks to minutes, empowering companies to meet customer obligations and reduce cost.
The solution provides a holistic view of the supply chain network, an end-to-end solution to identify and verify the impact of an event/disruption and provides alternative risk mitigation strategies. This process is done by using a sophisticated event processing engine to find and validate an event; using a discrete event simulator to determine the impact of an event across the supply chain; and utilizing the simulation engine and cost models to recommend alternative solutions to mitigate the impact of an event.
Particulars
Location: Boulder & Kochi
Role: Product Designer
Activities: Lead product design, research, user experience, user interface design, user testing, and prototyping.
Platform: SaaS
Tools: Sketch, Adobe CC, Abstract, Craft and Slack.
Reflection
Final thoughts from the Designer
Digital Supply Chain is no longer active and didn’t acquire a second round of funding after I left the team. However, I’m very proud of my work. This was a really complex project, mainly due to needing to first build a supply chain network before we could even start on the feature that predicts events and distributions. If you are at all familiar with supply chain software, you’ll understand that it's a rabbit-hole of complexity, revealing new layers as you go. Without adequate initial research, we made the incorrect assumption that we could build such software as an MVP. In hindsight, if there was time to carry out the proper research I think we would have corrected our course. We could have possibly worked with existing supply chain software and focused our efforts on developing a solution that could have worked as an API or even something fully integrated.
