Strategic Supply Chain Management - Supply Chain Online

66 Strategic Supply Chain Management
As cleaning and structuring data become top priorities for a growing
number of companies, applications that support data quality control are
becoming more popular. At many companies, data maintenance is a part
of ongoing management processes; data administration positions even
have been created specifically to maintain data quality.
A key driver behind this push for data quality is a growing awareness
of the costs associated with poor data in transactions such as ordering
and invoicing. A study of the electronics industry by the U.S.-based
National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) revealed that
product and pricing inaccuracies were costing manufacturers and distributors
1 and 0.75 percent of sales, respectively. 9 These percentages may
not sound particularly alarming, but for a $200 million manufacturing
company, that’s an added cost of $2 million.
New industry initiatives to address data quality continue to emerge.
In the retail industry, for instance, the Uniform Code Council started an
organization called UCCnet to provide item data synchronization, standards
validation, and a global item registry for retailers and their suppliers.
By creating a single set of data usable by all, UCCnet plans to drive
out the costs associated with invoice and order errors and the time spent on
data quality. NEMA has created the Industry Data Exchange Association
(IDEA) to do the same for its industry.
When a supply chain architecture meets the test for integrity
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Required integration between applications is defined in the supply
chain process architecture, and the impact of application
integration issues on business performance is measured.
Processes are documented at each level of the supply chain
architecture, with clear descriptions of the data required to execute
each process.
Data quality is measured and managed, with clear ownership for
data creation and maintenance.
ARCHITECTURAL TOOLKITS
Just as a blueprint describes the construct of a building and how each element
fits together, your supply chain architecture should describe the construct
of your processes and how they interact. In order to be effective, this
needs to be done using clear, unambiguous terms. Just agreeing on a definition
of what “the supply chain is,” though, can be a major challenge.
This task has been complicated by the use of many similar-sounding and