As mentioned in my previous post, this time I would like to go through the definition I have offered you in the first post here. I believe this is important to do as it gives more clarity about what you need to have/arrange before you can actually start building your very own control tower.
To start with, I’d like to state my definition once more:
A control tower is a 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.
As can be seen, the definition consists of two parts. The first being what a control tower exactly is. Secondly, we can see that there is a part describing the function and activities of a control tower.
First up is the fact that a control tower must be a central point in the supply chain. Although it might sound like the control tower
must be the center-most department or company handling the goods, this is not necessarily true. What is meant here is that the tower should be able to overlook and oversee all the departments and/or companies within the supply chain. The image on the right gives an idea of what is meant with the central point. Here, we see the control tower taking control and oversight of all the different functions and departments of a company. So before you can even start to create a control tower, you should appoint a person, department or organization responsible for the control of the different departments.
The second concept I would like to address is the technology mentioned. This is the first of three pillars which every control tower is built upon. When talking about technology, mostly a shared database is meant. However, a database on its own is not very useful. The tower should also have the programs which are able to process the data going into and out of the database and interpret this. Moreover, every stakeholder in the control tower should be having access to the data. Therefore, cloud computing is a rather often-heard solution when it comes to control tower building.
The second of the three pillars is the people. Obviously, a control tower, just as any regular organization, cannot run without people. Therefore, people need to be available and empowered to steer and oversee the departments falling under the umbrella of the control tower. However, within these departments, the people also need to be made aware of the importance of the control tower, and, next to this, also need to listen to whatever the control tower tells them to do.
The third and last pillar is the processes. The processes are not necessarily only the processes taking place in the control tower, but also the processes taking place in the departments controlled by the tower. In order to oversee these as easy as possible, a decent communication channel should be set up, so the control tower gets insight into what is happening “on the floor”.
For now, the first part of the definition, the control tower itself has been discussed. In my next post, I’ll go deeper into the activities of the tower itself, as mentioned in the second part of the provided definition. Hope to see you there!
See Y’all!
Control Towers 