AWS Supply Chain Gets Four New Capabilities

AWS Supply Chain’s four new capabilities optimize supply chains with Amazon’s nearly 30 years of experience, managed service resilience, security, and business continuity. The 2024 capabilities will improve data lake, demand planning, and ML insights. AWS Supply Chain offers manufacturers and upstream supply chain processes like supplier orders supply planning, collaboration, sustainability, and generative AI.

Customers can forecast, plan, position, and replenish components and finished goods with AWS Supply Chain Supply Planning to reduce inventory costs and respond faster to demand changes and supply disruptions. Two, AWS Supply Chain N-Tier Visibility streamlines customer-multiple-tier supplier supply plan and demand change communication. Customers can securely collaborate with trading partners within clicks. Third, AWS Supply Chain Sustainability will centralize sustainability data request, collection, and audit. Finally, Amazon Q in AWS Supply Chain uses generative AI to summarize inventory, demand variability, and scenario tradeoffs.

AWS Supply Chain improves inventory visibility, minimises stock-outs and overstocks that damage consumer trust and raise carrying costs. AWS Supply Chain’s Demand Planning improves demand forecasts with Amazon’s supply chain and ML expertise. Machine learning-based AWS Supply Chain Insights recommends inventory and lead-time risk mitigation for customer supply chain data. Normalize ERP customer data with AWS Supply Chain. Customers want more upstream AWS Supply Chain Demand Planning and Insights support. Due to customer demand, 4 new capabilities were announced today.

They impress customers with supply chain management. Diego Pantoja-Navajas, vice president of AWS Supply Chain, said industry-leading analytics and ML help customers track and plan products from manufacturing to distribution. Inventory visibility, supply chain risk mitigation, cost reduction, and customer satisfaction improve with AWS Supply Chain. Generative AI-powered Amazon Q in AWS Supply Chain answers complex supply chain questions.

Enhanced upstream capabilities improve AWS Supply Chain visibility and insights

Supply chain leaders serve manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and suppliers. Integration of trading partners’ data stores often requires expensive customizations, long development cycles, or manual workarounds. Forecasts, order confirmations, shipment quantities, etc. are reconciled by supply planners. Siloed data, demand variations, supply disruptions, and vendor lead-time uncertainty make demand forecasting and inventory optimization difficult for many companies. Prices and availability of raw materials and components plague manufacturers.

Trading partner responses to customer data requests vary in quality, frequency, timeliness, and structure and are not always tracked or audited. Carbon emissions and hazardous materials have been reported via email, fax, and messaging apps without tracking or auditing. Many companies struggle to meet demand or stricter regulations with enough goods on time. Today, AWS Supply Chain helps customers manage their upstream supply chain, forecast materials and inventory, confirm supplier supply plans and commitments, and get accurate environmental data.

AWS Supply Chain Supply Planning’s advanced facility inventory prediction models use Amazon’s ML expertise. Supply Planning uses AWS Supply Chain Demand Planning demand forecasts, product, facility, BOM, and inventory data. Purchase orders and inventory transfer requests let customers order, store, and choose unit quantities.

Customers see their direct and multiple external trading partners with AWS Supply Chain N-Tier Visibility. Add trading partners with few clicks. Automation improves trade partner forecasting and communication. AWS Supply Chain N-Tier Visibility monitors trading partner inventory, demand forecasts, and purchase orders. Export purchase orders and supply plans to Amazon S3 for ERP integration. Chat and messaging from AWS Supply Chain simplify collaboration. Inventory managers can notify AWS Supply Chain of late component shipments. Shared supplier and manufacturer data helps customers identify sourcing risks and component shortages and reduce disruptions.

Sustainability professionals can securely access supplier network data and documents with AWS Supply Chain Sustainability. These customers can request, collect, and export product life cycle assessments, safety certificates, and hazardous substance reports through the supply chain. Customers can upload their own data collection form for suppliers to document sustainability issues, use a standard workflow process to remind them to respond, and communicate changes based on supplier responses. This feature lets customers report ESG compliance in one auditable document.

Customers can query supply chain data with generative AI

Customer want to easily identify causal relationships between factors that affect their supply chain decisions, such as demand fluctuations and supply disruptions, but it takes time and effort to gather and analyze data from many sources. Visualizing and trading complex supply chains is difficult. Without data, supply chain leaders plan and position inventory. Amazon Q in AWS Supply Chain answers data analysis and supply chain decision questions in natural language, boosting customer productivity.

Amazon Q, powered by Amazon Bedrock, intelligently answers AWS Supply Chain Data Lake “what?”, “why?”, and “what if?” questions using a natural language interface. Customers can customize Amazon Q to see complex supply chain tradeoffs. Customer asks AWS Supply Chain, “What is the financial impact of delayed replenishment orders in the Southeast?” “8 delayed replenishment orders could deplete 20 regional fast-moving products,” Q said. Revenue will drop $150K due to delay.”

Clients may ask “Why are we not moving product from other regions to make up this shortfall?” Amazon Q said network inventory is low next week. Customers ask, “What if I expedite air freight orders?” Amazon Q says, “Air freight typically arrives in 2 days and could reduce revenue impact by $95K, but adds $2.4K in expedite costs.” Amazon Q’s fast, accurate responses help supply chains.

BCG is an AWS strategic partner. BCG and AWS balance agility, resilience, service, cost, and sustainability to grow supply chains. Drake Watten, BCG managing director and partner, said the partnership deploys, scales, and promotes AWS supply chain solutions. “We are supporting projects with the generally available capabilities and preparing customers for the upcoming AWS Supply Chain releases that will improve material, component, and finished goods planning, partner management, and supply chain management with generative AI.”

The leading independent material-handling equipment supplier and rental source, Equipment Depot, has over 50 branches and 850 technicians. Equipment Depot Operations director Joakim Langkaas is excited to work with AWS on a massive digital transformation strategy for rapid growth. “AWS Supply Chain will improve inventory, planning, and data-driven supply decisions. Demand Planning, Supply Planning, and Insights predict low inventory and OEM delays and make real-time recommendations to improve service, customer experience, and equipment downtime. The early adopter of this technology expects these new capabilities to help their teams place parts on time.

Woodside is creative and determined in Australia. From WA to the Gulf, Woodside powers homes, lights, and industry. “They remote locations prevent us from using supply chain processes like overnight shipment of spare parts, so they rely on stocking the right parts across they warehouse network and leveraging multiple modes of transport to support they operated facilities,” said Woodside Energy Supply Chain vice president Tracey Simpson they shared vision with AWS Supply Chain improved supply chain visibility for they company.

Order Insights’ proactive order status, delivery issues, and recommendations should boost system and workflow efficiency if scaled. Rescheduling maintenance and reducing material expedites should help business. They are also excited about AWS Supply Chain‘s next phase, which includes advanced supply planning, partner collaboration, and generative AI to improve supply chain performance.