AI-powered supply chain management with TCS
Century Supply Chain Solutions taps TCS to develop an AI-powered supply chain optimization platform.
Industry
Travel and Logistics
Data and AI in Travel Industry for a Memorable Passenger Experience
Solution
Consulting
TCS Consulting Services to Achieve Success in the Digital Era
Highlights
- The global supply chain has been navigating choppy waters over the past few years.
- Persistent challenges such as port congestion, labor shortages, and extreme weather events have been cropping up at an alarming rate.
- To succeed despite these challenges, leading logistics solutions provider Century Supply Chain Solutions tapped TCS to support the creation of an AI-powered supply chain optimization platform.
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Choppy waters
Supply chain is truly a competitive advantage for any company. Quite simply, companies cannot sell their products if they cannot reliably get them into the hands of customers.
However, the global supply chain has been navigating choppy waters over the past few years. Persistent challenges such as port congestion, labor shortages, and extreme weather events seem to be increasing at an alarming rate, plaguing industries worldwide.
To achieve optimal success despite these perpetual obstacles, Century Supply Chain Solutions (Century), a leading provider of innovative logistics and supply chain management services, recommends that companies look at their supply chain more like a symphony than a collection of trucks, warehouses, and freighters.
To achieve optimal success despite these perpetual obstacles, Century Supply Chain Solutions (Century), a leading provider of innovative logistics and supply chain management services, recommends that companies look at their supply chain more like a symphony than a collection of trucks, warehouses, and freighters.
The sound of music
While comparing a supply chain to a symphony may seem like an unconventional analogy, the two share striking similarities upon close examination.
In an orchestral performance, diverse instrumental sections come together harmoniously to create a unified musical experience. Likewise, a supply chain is comprised of various entities—suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers—collaborating cohesively toward the common goal of delivering a product to the end customer. Each entity plays a vital role, contributing its specialized part to the overall production process, as raw materials are transformed and transported to retail shelves.
Precise timing is critical for both symphonies and supply chains. Just as musicians must follow a predetermined tempo, supply chain operations must adhere to stringent timelines to meet customer demand. From procurement to final delivery, every step requires meticulous execution to maintain the flow without unplanned disruptions or missteps.
Moreover, the success of symphonies and supply chains hinges on the collaboration of human talent and specialized tools. A musician’s mastery over their instrument helps them produce beautiful music, just as supply chain professionals leverage technology to identify optimal routes, foresee potential bottlenecks, and maintain efficient product flow.
However, managing numerous technology platforms across a network of partners, vendors, and suppliers can become an overwhelming endeavor, like musicians each playing their instruments without a conductor to unify the performers, set the tempo, and execute a clear overall vision for the masterpiece.
Creating a symphony
Century’s focus since inception has been to deliver the best blend of technology, people, and services through a single global supply chain optimization platform. The company partnered with TCS to evaluate its current technology stack and product offerings and chart a course to maintain its position as a tech leader in the global logistics arena. The result of those efforts is the latest version of the platform VIZIV.
TCS worked with Century to perform a gap analysis, select the latest technology stack to deploy, and make enhancements to the platform to meet the ever-changing needs of the global user base. We provided Century access to industry-leading experts in cloud technologies, user experience design, security, and other key areas of focus.
Once a plan was formalized, TCS built out multiple teams of developers and testers to work side by side with the Century development team to deliver VIZIV in record time. This included the development of an automated UX testing platform built on a proprietary automation platform.
Visionary solution
VIZIV, a result of the Century-TCS collaboration, is an industry-leading supply chain optimization and real-time transportation visibility platform that provides trusted visibility and real-time insights across the entire logistics lifecycle, from purchase order placement and vendor booking to carrier booking, vessel sailing, container location, transit time, freight costs, and US domestic last-mile delivery.
With VIZIV and Century’s global network, which carries decades of industry experience, clients gain the mission-critical visibility required to harmoniously choreograph their supply chain operations, ensuring seamless synchronization of all moving components.
Leveraging advanced data analytics powered by machine learning and AI, VIZIV seamlessly connects with a multitude of enterprise systems, including ERP, WMS, TMS, and more. Its highly configurable architecture enables easy customization to meet unique business requirements and industry-specific compliance needs. Powerful workflow automation and real-time exception management tools further empower supply chain professionals to streamline processes, mitigate risks proactively, and drive continuous optimization.
Moreover, VIZIV’s intuitive user interface, coupled with rich analytics and dynamic dashboards, fosters data-driven decision-making. Supply chain leaders can instantly visualize key metrics, identify bottlenecks, and model scenarios to determine the most efficient routing and asset utilization strategies.
Standing ovation
Together, Century and VIZIV have:
- Empowered customers to generate ocean freight savings of up to 35% through system-driven consolidation efforts. The reduced containers shipped also generated equivalent reductions in carbon emissions.
- Helped a global apparel company achieve upwards of 95% on-time delivery to their US-based customers.
- Assisted a Canadian retail company in achieving a 97.42% offshore vendor performance with respect to booking, delivery, and documentation.
“Just as an orchestra requires the harmonious interplay of diverse instrumental sections to produce beautiful music, a highly orchestrated supply chain demands the synchronized collaboration of many interconnected entities. By strategically partnering with TCS, a world leader in supply chain technology, we were able to compose VIZIV, a powerful supply chain visibility and optimization platform that gives organizations the conductor’s baton to direct their entire logistics symphony, so they get a competitive advantage.”
