The power of seeing what’s there

Supply chain efficiency is arguably the most important success variable in global electronics manufacturing today. The hyper-efficient methodologies already practiced by most competitors have raised the bar high, but not so high that substantial improvements can’t still be achieved.

Hiding within the far-flung parts assemblies and finished goods inventories of every major electronics manufacturer, for example, is a major performance hindrance that Trade Wings has the ability to overcome: the limited visibility of inventory assets.

Taking down the walls

The supply chain of practically every global electronics manufacturer includes contract manufacturers, each with its own supply chain and its own inventories of the components required to manufacture, repair, or refurbish the OEM’s products in a timely manner. Each contract manufacturer has incentives to maintain the privacy of its procurement and inventory data, not the least of which is that other contract manufacturers in the supply chain may be competitors.

As a result, the OEM rarely has anything approaching a comprehensive, bird’s-eye view of the inventory within the chain. This lack of visibility inevitably leads to duplicate purchasing, persistent problems of over-supply and under-supply, and the failure to pare performance turnaround times to the minimum.

Trade Wings has developed a combination of proprietary technology and human intelligence through which we create central database(s) of all inventory in the supply chain. This information is aggregated so that it can be made available to decision-makers throughout the chain without revealing the location of individual parts, thereby preserving the confidentiality of each supply chain partner’s inventory records.

Inventory data is processed by Xnet, a web-based proprietary technology system developed by Trade Wings specifically for supply chain inventory management. Xnet "normalizes" all data in the system, and its part-mapping function automatically matches part numbers from various manufacturers that signify functionally identical items. Managers can quickly see not only the availability of the parts on their BOMs, but all other available parts in the system that can be substituted. Xnet can do the same with sub-assemblies and assemblies, breaking them down to track the availability of their individual components.

Duplicate purchasing is eliminated, and over-supplies in one part of the supply chain can cancel out under-supplies in other parts, saving both time and money.