Supply Chain Insight using Snowflake Marketplace and Streamlit

The global supply chain is a complex system that allows for the efficient movement of goods and services around the world. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of this system and highlighted the potential for disruption.

One of the main reasons for the fragility of the global supply chain is its dependence on a few key countries, particularly China. Many countries rely heavily on China for the production of goods, such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, and personal protective equipment (PPE). When China shut down its factories and ports in the early stages of the pandemic, it caused a ripple effect throughout the global supply chain, leading to shortages of essential goods in many countries.

Another factor contributing to the fragility of the global supply chain is the lack of diversification in suppliers and transportation routes. Many companies have adopted a “just-in-time” inventory model, which means they only order and receive goods as they are needed, rather than stockpiling them. This reduces storage costs but leaves companies vulnerable to supply chain disruptions if their suppliers or transportation routes are disrupted.

Finally, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of resilience and flexibility in the supply chain. Many companies have had to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, such as a surge in demand for certain products, disruptions in transportation routes, and changes in government regulations. Those companies that were able to quickly pivot their supply chains were better able to weather the storm than those that were less flexible.

Overall, the fragility of the global supply chain in a post-pandemic world underscores the need for companies to diversify their suppliers, transportation routes, and inventory management strategies. It also highlights the importance of resilience and flexibility in adapting to changing market conditions.

Companies can achieve supply chain insight through various means, including:

• Data Analytics: By collecting and analyzing data from various sources such as suppliers, transportation providers, and customers, companies can gain valuable insights into their supply chain performance. This includes identifying bottlenecks, improving delivery times, reducing costs, and enhancing overall efficiency.
• Collaborative Planning: Collaborating with suppliers and partners in the supply chain can help companies gain better visibility into their operations. By sharing data and planning together, companies can optimize their operations and improve efficiency.
• Technology: Technology solutions such as sensors, RFID, and blockchain can provide real-time visibility into the supply chain. This enables companies to track products and shipments throughout the supply chain, improve inventory management, and reduce the risk of disruptions.
• Risk Management: By identifying and assessing risks in the supply chain, companies can take steps to mitigate them. This includes developing contingency plans for disruptions, diversifying suppliers, and improving the visibility of the supply chain.
• Continuous Improvement: Companies can achieve supply chain insight by continually monitoring and analyzing their supply chain performance. This includes identifying areas for improvement and implementing changes to optimize their operations.

Virtually all of these recommendations can be achieved through the use of data. This article will explore using data sources from the Snowflake Marketplace to discover events around the world that may affect suppliers or interrupt your supply chain. This data combined with a customer’s ERP data can provide insights into the potential impact on pending orders and equip organizations with alternative options to handle the situation. This solution is not intended to be used unilaterally in making decisions regarding suppliers from within your organization but rather is intended to augment existing supply chain data sources when making decisions.

In this solution we will utilize Resilinc EventWatch AI data from the Snowflake Marketplace. Resilinc’s risk management service monitors millions of news and social feeds across numerous countries and languages to identify critical supply chain developments. AI capabilities cleanse and filter this information to provide 100% relevant notification to this dataset which is updated in near real-time. Specifically, this data includes global events that threaten to disrupt supply chains worldwide including but not limited to weather — flooding, hurricanes, wild fires; and geopolitical events — labor strikes, war, political unrest. These alerts also include names of suppliers within the affected region that could be at risk. Users may subscribe to this data to see only suppliers they work with in order to remove unnecessary noise from the data.

Some interesting inclusions in the EventWatch data are lat/lon as well as a severity score with a low/med/high/severe risk score. In our solution we calculate these event severity scores to the projected number of weeks it may take for this event to subside and then take into account current inventory levels of components or ingredients provided by this supplier. This calculation provides a hypothetical time window where manufacturing and orders may be affected. We can project that time window onto future orders/deliveries to identify those that could be at risk.

With the supplier and time window identified, we locate the impacted order pulling up details on the component being supplied, the order number(s) and the price of those impacted orders. Additionally we include the names of potential alternative vendors in the event that they may need to be contacted quickly to avoid interruptions. We can also access historic purchasing history of any of our suppliers. If the need arises to contact an alternate supplier, the purchase history from the at risk supplier can be quickly accessed in order to provide details and context.

In part two of this article we will expand the scope of the solution and include demand forecasting. Stay tuned for the second version coming out shortly.