A new industry survey has found that two-thirds of manufacturers have not successfully synchronized their supply chain operations with those of their partners. Manufacturers with out-of-synch supply chains encounter added distribution and planning burdens as well as increased costs, researchers also found.

The survey was conducted jointly by the publication APICS—The Performance Advantage, whose readers include resource management professionals in manufacturing, and the French software concern ILOG.

Some nine out of 10 survey respondents said they believed that supply chain planning tools could help address synchronization issues. Yet only one-third of the respondents said that their companies were planning to address those issues in the next six months.

In addition, eight out of 10 survey respondents reported that it was difficult to coordinate disparate software systems with their supply chain partners. More than two-thirds also noted that it was difficult to coordinate their supply chain operations with those of their outsourcing partners.

The survey found that the use of disparate information systems hindered efforts to obtain visibility of inventory in the supply chain. Two-thirds of the survey takers said that they used different supply chain management applications than did their partners. The lack of compatible software prevented access to valuable external data, resulting in incomplete visibility into their supply chains, the researchers observed. Indeed, 54 percent of the respondents cited this as an obstacle to supply chain synchronization. (See chart.)

Despite respondents' evident interest in addressing supply chain issues, it appears that they don't have the budgets to solve those problems right now. But that should change, says Christian Deutsch, general manager for ILOG's Value Chain Management business division. "Investments in effective and efficient supply chain management solutions are clearly top-of-mind for the manufacturing sector," he says. "As IT budgets revive, we expect that manufacturing operations will invest in supply chain planning solutions to synchronize their operations, reduce costs and realize a quick return on investment."

Editor's Note: For more on the subject of supply chain visibility, see "How far can you see?" on page 27 of this issue.