Supply Chain Management is the critical life line support to the operations and inefficiencies at any stage of the link recurrently add to the operating cost. It is essential to recognize, that specially in Supply Chain, there is no “free lunch”. The costly set up of an effective and efficient Supply Chain will either materialize upfront or over the long run but without investing in the process, unnecessary expenses will certainly be unavoidable. The typical supply chain begins with the extraction of raw materials and followed by several production links that add value before distributing materials or units to storage centers. The materials or units then move from main storage to distribution hubs and centers that diminish in size and increase in distance to ultimately reach the costumer. Every stage and link in the chain has inherently a threat of error and added cost or the capability of being seamless and inexpensive. The talents and organizations that rope the links effectively are ahead of the game. While most professional companies will be profitable regardless of their supply chain efficiencies, only few will partner business links to have a tangible competitive advantage.
In the 1980’s, the availability of Personal Computers opened a new era of advantages for the Supply Chain disciplines such as logistics, purchasing, sourcing, etc. The PC could now electronically collect and divulge to persons, at either end of the link, the details that make a successful supply chain transaction. The basic idea behind Supply Chain Management (SCM) was born and organizations that embraced the new advantages quickly exchanged information to help them optimize the fluctuations in operation needs, market demand, materials availability, and production capabilities. However, within the Marine industry the advantages brought by IT focus on significantly other fronts than on demand adjustments to mass production or routine assembly line changes. In theory, SCM wants to minimize inventories in order to free up tied capital while reducing costly transportation lines and delivering supplies just in time of need. Additional advantages captured by IT advances in the Marine industry focus on high customization of needs and extraction of middlemen in a highly dynamic supply chain. We seldom replicate the exact spares needs from one ship to another and although parts among the ships can be shared, the timing is hardly synchronized. Although the ships within a fleet move within predefined schedules, their different duty intensities describe customized needs and therefore the need to hone on individual needs.
The customization needs of every ship can be satisfied by adding individualized and undivided attention to every internal customer within the fleet, or by adding transparency enabling technologies. The nature of the marine industry is that several “integrators” of marine technology use industrial equipment that has been “marinized”. In other words, system integrators scanned technologies and equipment that can be applied for marine use and re-branded the parts under their own catalog. Although the system integrators add value by engineering the use of the equipment for a marine process, it is the uninformed marine organizations that rest merciless to the proprietary information. I fully support the sustainability of a business that partners within the mutually beneficial coexistence of the corporations. While some companies will certainly embrace this philosophy, others will shortsightedly seek to maximize profits at the expense of partners’ inefficiencies which can inevitability not last forever. We therefore need to add customized and diligent attention to the sourcing of equipment to dissect the OEMs from system integrators proprietary details by either hiring specialized support for the fleets or investing in a robust database.
