What exactly is a control tower?
Probably, if someone asks you this question, you are likely to think of the massive towers you see at an airport. However, this is a different type of control towers than what I am meaning to talk about in this blog for the next couple of weeks. The subject of this blog will be the logistical control tower, or, the supply chain control tower. You might already have heard of these control towers, especially if you take any interest in the logistics field or in the supply chain management field.
For the people who don’t have that much knowledge in this exciting branch, this blog might shed some initial light on the topic so you can familiarize yourself with the matter.
To start off with, I’d like you to picture yourself a control tower on the airfield and think of the operations and processes taking place here. In your regular airport control tower, people are communicating with the planes on final approach to the airstrip, and ensuring that no pilot takes faulty decisions which might cause harm or problems to other users of the same airstrip. Key to this is communication, availability of information and overview. The controllers in the tower combine this information and ensure a smooth process.
However, when looking at production or trading processes, it can be seen that the job which controllers have at the airfield, is becoming and more applicable in this field as well. Obviously, taking an employee and assigning him with the task to monitor suppliers, clients and competitors is not done. Especially because this job is simply too complex for a person to execute on his own and the overview is hard to create.
Therefore, in recent years businesses have developed technology which is able to take over this job. Simply put, this technology is merely a database of all sorts of information which companies share amongst each other. From this data, overviews and dashboards can be created which, on its turn, can be interpreted and acted upon by different companies along the supply chain of certain products.
For this first post, and for you to get more acquainted with the logistical control tower, a mere simple definition of the control tower will suffice. Later, in the coming weeks, more factors might be added to get a more complete picture. For now, the following definition is sufficient: A control tower is the central point in the supply chain which has the technology, people and processes enabling them to oversee and control the flow of products, information and money to and from each shackle within the supply chain.
For now, I hope to have clarified the logistical control tower a little. Hopefully, if the subject has caught your interest, I will see you in my next posts!
Control Towers 