Supply Chain: Prioritize Coordination not Overstocking
Originally published by the french media supply-chain.net, this article by Yves Guillo, Senior Manager at EFESO Management Consultants, explains how coordinated, high-quality data sharing between partners enables better decision-making, greater visibility across the chain, and more resilient operations. It highlights why clear rules, shared responsibilities, and trustworthy information are now key pillars of modern supply-chain performance.
Yves Guillo, Senior Supply Chain Manager at EFESO Management Consultants, urges companies to rethink how they lead and structure their supply chains. Today, supply chains function as living ecosystems that rely on collaboration, transparency, and shared governance.
Recent disruptions have exposed the fragility of global networks. The 2021 shutdown of a magnesium plant in China put pressure on the entire European automotive industry, and a temporary slowdown in an Asian port during the pandemic was enough to halt factories across multiple continents. According to Guillo, the most advanced organizations are moving away from siloed, locally optimized models and toward fully integrated systems built on synchronized flows and shared visibility.
Shared Governance: A Way to Overcome Mistrust
This shift requires a genuine cultural transformation. Instead of each stakeholder optimizing its own operations, companies must align around shared objectives — service level, total cost, and resilience. Achieving this depends on sharing key data such as forecasts, inventory levels, and capacity constraints.
The benefits are proven: in the food industry, shared forecasting reduces stockouts by up to 20%, while in aerospace, joint planning improves schedule stability by as much as 25%. Yet mistrust remains a barrier, especially the fear of losing control over data. Guillo stresses that information sharing is not a strategic risk, but a performance enabler, improving visibility, speeding up decisions, and reducing safety stocks. “Ultimately, coordination is a matter of governance,” he emphasizes.
Digital Tools: Enablers, Not Magic Solutions
Digital solutions — collaborative platforms, control towers, digital twins — are key accelerators of this new model. In pharmaceuticals, for example, they shorten response times when disruptions occur. But Guillo warns that technology alone cannot fix governance issues. Without clear rules for how information is shared, even the best tools fall short.
Read the original article in french: https://supply-chain.net/gouvernance-donnee-supply-chain/