Annual Report 2010-11 - GS1 India

Visibilty
Enabling full visibility of the supply chain has
been identified as one of four strategic pillars
that will be the focus of GS1’s work in the
coming years.
Visibility is a broad concept that relates to
knowing where things are at any point in time
and why they are there (or where they have been
in the past). Visibility means leveraging a range
of standards and business applications in order
to see more event-based information relating to
key business processes. It is increasingly a key
capability for businesses to be able to address
the perennial issue of “if you can’t ‘see’ something
then you can’t measure it, and if you can’t measure
it, it’s probably costing your business too much.”
Many supply chain processes can be transformed
through deeper, more accurate and rich visibility
information. These processes could include
improving overall supply chain accuracy, velocity
and effectiveness, the management of inventory,
product tracking and tracing, confirming the
chain of custody and ownership of a product,
product authentication and managing products
returned by customers.
A recent study showed clearly that best-in-class
supply chain performers, measured as those
companies with the lowest out-of-stocks,
lowest landed costs and highest on time
shipment rates also have the most visibility into
their supply chains.
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