If you lead an electronics supply chain, you certainly know the challenges facing your industry. Demand is skyrocketing but nightmarish sourcing, global volatility and high rates of theft continue to plague your profits.

Of course, that is on top of normal challenges facing every supply chain manager. Many logistics professionals turn to supply chain visibility to address these challenges and enable a more profitable future. Unfortunately, it can be hard to make meaning of the noise around visibility. In this article, you’ll learn about the three visibility standards you need in order to make real improvements to your electronics supply chain. 

1. Visibility for the whole picture

Many electronics require nightmarishly complex sourcing operations. Some components need to be ordered months – if not years – in advance. Once components arrive, an intricate manufacturing processes continues to demand high levels of orchestration. To top it all off, current global volatility has led to unprecedented shortages.

As a supply chain leader, you need a level of visibility that helps you orchestrate easier and more cost-effectively at a global scale. If you can access the location and condition of your goods around the world at any point in time, you can improve your ability to deliver on time, manage your inventory and so much more. Local, small-scale, isolated visibility will not provide you the holistic picture you need.

2. Visibility to follow theft

Demand and shortages have skyrocketed the value of electronics – turning your goods into a prime target for cargo theft in recent years. Security and loss prevention are current deal-breakers for many supply chains.

Any electronics supply chain leader needs the visibility to know when theft incidents occur, at the moment it occurs. Knowing exactly where and when means having the data to potentially follow your goods and retrieve them. More than that, being equipped with data allows you to pinpoint trends and move forward with evidence-based theft prevention strategies.

3. Visibility to monitor damage

Even if your cargo arrives, it also needs to arrive in one piece. Screens, computer chips and other components are sensitive. Haphazard, improper shipping with unsafe temperatures, humidity and vibrations is a sure-fire way to drastically cut into profits.

The visibility in your supply chain needs to take into account the condition of your cargo. If you don’t keep a close eye on humidity, temperature, shocks and tilts, your cargo – and your profits – are left vulnerable. Not to mention, there’s a lot more condition monitoring can reveal about your damaged cargo.

How to achieve the right visibility for your supply chain

While increasing your visibility is always a good thing, not all visibility investments will help you address the exact challenges you face – so long as they do not meet the baseline standards listed above. At a minimum, your supply chain visibility needs to have a global scope, provide insights into thefts and visibility to monitor damage. Today, most of this critical data is unavailable in electronics supply chains.

If you want to know the location and condition of your goods wherever they are, at any moment in time, invest in global visibility. A global picture means you have a detailed, holistic understanding of your goods around the world – not just snapshots.

Learn more about global visibility for electronics supply chains in our quick guide below.