Portals: The ‘ants-wer’ to supply-chain management

Lessons for the workplace from insect supply chains and how portal technology is enabling the strengthening of processes. By Kate Clifton.

‘Entomology’, for those of you not familiar with the term, is the scientific study of insects. If you, like me, are finding that the cruel UK winter temperatures are wreaking havoc on your ability to form a coherent sentence, ‘bugology’ is the less-technical, conversational option.

Interestingly, most forms of entomology adhere to a ‘taxonomic specialisation’, whereby experts specialise in a particular family or single order of insects. This got my attention. How could entomology be applied to the everyday workflow processes found at the enterprise level – and, more specifically, how could it be applied to supply-chain management using portals?

The bucket-brigade model
A few related web searches uncovered an interesting paper, published in 2004 by the Martin J Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University in the US. ‘Supply chain management, Meet Messor barbarus’, by Maureen Roen, focuses on research of the food-gathering process practiced by the Messor barbarus – a seed-foraging ant found in southern Spain. According to Professor Scott Webster, one of those involved in the study, this insect supply chain offers business managers an optimised, low cost and highly robust model for workflow management. The other beauty of the ant-inspired model, which is likely to gain approval from over-worked change managers, is that it is really simple – don’t waste your resources and do everything you can to empower those you focus on.

The ‘bucket brigade’ model is based on the various elements of the ant’s harvesting technique, covering its journey from the nest to its return with a seed. ‘Bucket brigade’ is the description of the various hand-offs between co-workers which, Roen says, results in “… a marvel of optimisation – a spontaneous, self balancing division of labour .”

Basically, the ants leave smaller workers to explore in the areas furthest away from the nest, and larger, more powerful ants receive the seed loads and rush them back to base. By working in this way, they are effectively speeding up the entire process by cutting out factors that would result in a more lengthy time-to-delivery. They are operating a highly organised supply chain, which is reliant on an accurate, smooth and effective workflow.

Apply this theory to the workflow side of organisational supply-chain management and it makes a lot of sense. Factor in computer technology and there are certainly comparisons to be made. A 2000 article by Ivars Peterson, ‘Calculating Swarms’, published on Science News Online suggests some striking similarities. It describes how ants leave pheromone signatures at numerous points along their journey – so they can always be pinpointed. This sounds very much like a process making its way through your network and passing out alerts as it goes. Ants can locate their workers and check up on the progress of their food consignments by following scent markers. With technology, you can monitor the progress of your workflow using digital signatures that show that it has passed through the various departments it needs to in order to be actioned. And, like the ants, you can bypass those areas that slow the whole process down. Think about the tasks involved in the order, processing and delivery of any product. Where do you find the lengthiest and most cumbersome stages? What is effectively complicating your supply chain or slowing you down? If you can eliminate these, you can therefore optimise your remaining processes and, in turn, increase the capability of your business as a whole. For instance, Toyota is one organisation that used a variation of the bucket-brigade model to great success as early as the 1970s – improving the picking and packing processes in the production of its car’s seat covers.

Today’s organisations operate in a highly competitive business environment, which dictates that they adopt a nimble and agile approach to mission-critical processes at every level. It is here that the bucket brigade model can be applied to supply-chain management. Real-time and just-in-time supply-chains are gaining more importance and for many companies, say analysts, there has been a shift from ‘reactive’ to ‘anticipatory’ management of processes.

And the technology that is enabling many to optimise their workflow and speed up the supply chain is none other than the portal. And why? “In any long-running process there are opportunities for errors and misunderstandings to ‘creep in’ through the normal flow,” says Martin Percival, senior European technology evangelist at BEA Systems. “This is particularly true when the process contains interactions that require human intervention.” A portal, he says, can be tailored and personalised to give a more relevant insight into the process at any given time. In turn, this provides a better understanding of the supply chain and all the processes involved.

Supply-chain portals
Perhaps the most obvious attraction to the supply-chain portal is that is makes paper-based processes effectively redundant. A relief to many businesses that rely on paper forms for the processing of orders. “They always get lost in the post don’t they?” says Christopher Harris-Jones, research director at Ovum. And it’s not just order processing where this type of technology can come in handy. Payments can also be processed in the same way.

The process operates “from the portal’s end, rather than the supply-chain business end,” says Jones. That basically enables the organisation that has implemented the portal to allow businesses involved in the supply chain access to specified, appropriate parts of its system. Once an agreement between the companies has been established, users can place orders directly into your information technology (IT) infrastructure and receive alerts notifying them of their order’s progress, for example. The software is relatively cheap and by working in this way you can significantly reduce time-to-delivery. It also frees up members of staff as the actual process takes less people to manage. The fact that all stakeholders can check the progress of orders also reduces the need for large call centres – freeing up more staff resource. And the ubiquitous nature and accessibility of the web makes it incredibly user-friendly.

In addition, a portal can assist with storage. In car dealers, for example, there is limited space to store parts and the emphasis is on locating, receiving and moving the part as quickly as possible. If parts are delivered nice and early but then sit in storage for days, or even weeks, before being transferred to the workshop for installation, you are limiting your capability to process more deliveries. Portal technology makes the procedure more precise. One example is ‘just in time’ delivery, whereby the system is used to pinpoint the order’s progress and ensure that is delivered as close to the transfer date as possible. So, a portal can become an instrumental part of the supply chain. “Ford insists that all its suppliers use its portal,” says Jones. “And if you don’t, you don’t do business with them. They were one of the first car manufacturers to do this.”

The technology, like that of the bucket brigade, is fairly simple and, for those organisations that have not yet realised the benefits of the portal, suitably ‘low-tech’. And it performs its purpose well, assisted by the further development of portlets and web-services remote portlets (WSRPs).

The technology provides a single point of access for all stakeholders, which increases visibility and functionality. “Portals provide a framework of pre-built components (such as search, rules engines, collaboration tools and presentation tools) that dramatically increases developer productivity and ensures that presentation-tier logic is built in a rigorously controlled environment,” says Ed Lane, senior systems engineer for telecommunications and media at BEA systems. Its WebLogic product has three key elements:

1. The foundation – the runtime that connects resources to databases, enabling application integration, connection of security providers, and application clustering and load balancing;

2. Lifecycle-management tools – the tools and processes that manage the inception, production and maintenance of the portal and enable the development of portal artefacts. Administrators and users can also access and manage the portal environment using these tools;

3. Business services/components – pre-built engines and components that provide features such as collaboration, commerce, personalisation, mobility, search and content management out of the box.

Interoperability with disparate systems is another key function and is being monitored closely as supply-chain portals evolve. “There are a number of emerging standards looking at addressing interoperability between implementations on differing portal solutions,” says Lane. JSR 168 is one of these, and defines how to implement portlets that that are portable between different portals. “Web-services remote portlets address the ability of a portlet in one vendor’s portal to be made available as a ‘service producer’ and be consumed by another portal,” says Lane. “In other words, if one portal has an exchange rate portlet and is WSRP compliant, it can be consumed and made available in another portal.”

For BEA, says Lane, “interoperability will be at the core of all future portal offerings”. But this is not the only area of focus. Ongoing areas of development and improvement are expected to include ease of use, productivity (both for developers and administrators), adherence to industry standards and responsibility-assignment features and security. The allure and success of the supply-chain portal is evident. Tap those three words into a search engine and you’ll come across a variety of positive, customer case studies. Jonathan Downes, an industry consultant who was formerly e-business projects manager at MG Rover, says that extranet technology transformed the motor company’s dealer network – making it more efficient, less costly and more collaborative.

“When you have a high number of outlets over a large geographic area the internet is a gift,” says Downes. At the outset of the project not all dealers had high-speed connections, but communication via this medium still provided numerous benefits over traditional paper-based processes, such as faxing.

“Information could be deployed to all outlets simultaneously and as we were viewing information that was held centrally, it removed the administrative overhead of hundreds of dealers filing the same piece of paper or e-mail on their systems,” says Downes. For him, a key factor in the success of the project was delivery – something that he urges businesses to take into consideration when implementing portal technology. “Deliver in clearly defined short, sharp chunks,” he says. “Determine where you want to go but ring fence the deliverables so that you can demonstrate value as quickly as possible.” This generates an immediate sense of involvement, gains buy in and reduces the likelihood of changes having to be made post delivery. “Take user security and permissions seriously and don’t underestimate the background administration required to get it right,” says Downes.

The security issue
Harris-Jones agrees that it is imperative to get the security on your supply-chain portal absolutely spot-on. And that it is a bit of a grey area at many organisations. In itself, says Harris-Jones, the portal is a “really good mechanism when it comes to delivering security”. The problem, however, rests more with those that are involved in the supply-chain process. “Security problems are, principally, people-based,” says Harris-Jones. Organisations can run the risk of opening themselves up to fraud when they allow others access to an integral area of their IT. It is essential to define clear parameters that set the rules for who can access which areas of the portal – and these alone. The infrastructure of the portal is as secure as you make it in the early design and implementation stages. “I think the whole issue of permissions and security is a difficult one,” says Downes. But get this right and the supply-chain portal’s benefits clearly override the security implications associated with its use. “Organisations need organisation, and communication is a critical success factor here, says Downes. “But you must manage the risk and minimise the impact of a security breach from other malicious or accidental causes.”

Going forward then, security is a key issue that will require continuous attention both from the providers of portal products and those that invest in their implementation.

Downes also singles out ease-of-use as a key future consideration for portal vendors. “Certainly in the early stages of a project, I would sacrifice functionality for simplicity,” says Downes. “Unless the systems are easy to use and understandable by both the authors and the receivers of information, you won’t get adoption. Without adoption you could have the fanciest system in the world but it won’t add any value to your organisation.”

According to Harris-Jones, the current choice of supply-chain portals on the market is being affected by a number of acquisitions in the portal vendor space. “There are only really two groups of vendors now: the big ones (IBM, Oracle, SAP and BEA) and the others are tiny niche vendors with very small revenues,” he says. “I suspect that the big guys will eventually start to deliver some more industry-specific and task-specific versions of their portals when pushed hard enough by their customers.” But that, he says, may not happen as quickly as it would if there were more mid-tier vendors battling it out for market share.

Vendors can expect to have their work cut out for them as the supply-chain portal grows in popularity. And security is key. A perfectly balanced portal can be a boon to organisational supply chains and, if you get it right, your order-to-delivery processes could be as simple, quick and effective as the supply chain that ants have been ‘beetling away’ at for years.

References:
Supply Chain Management, Meet Messor barbarus, Maureen Roen, 2004. (http://whitman.syr.edu/Pdfs/0SCM_bucket_brigade.pdf)
Calculating swarms, Ivars Peterson, 2000, published on Science News Online.
(http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20001111/bob10.asp)