Control Tower in Supply Chain

Control Tower is the latest buzzword in the Supply Chain World. It’s also called the 360 Degrees view of your supply chain.

So, what exactly is Control Tower? 

When you are at the ground level, your vision is very limited; the big picture of the landscape around you is unknown to you. Now, imagine being able to climb a tall tower; your entire perspective of the things around you gets enhanced tremendously. 

A similar construct exist in the supply chain. Buyers, tied down to their day-to-day work, don’t get the chance to envision and understand the big picture of the problems facing them. 

Likewise, even supply chain executives, despite all their abilities, see only what the buyers see: a very limited and two-dimensional picture of the issues facing them. 

Control Tower is a software platform that aims to combat this limit in the vision of its users. This platform allows the buyers and executives to climb the metaphorical tower, so that they are able to see and fully understand the bigger picture.


A Control Tower platform provides end to end visibility of the entire supply chain. It features detailed information about demands, forecasts, current inventories, shipments in transits, expected delays, shortages, excess inventories, and more. 

Moreover, it provides all of this information in a streamlined manner and in a single place so that the user is able to get a very detailed top-down view of the issue at hand. 

The page also includes a dashboard view, which includes detailed graphical presentations, so that taking a quick view at the current situation is made a breeze.


The Control Tower platform is also easily accessible to the trading partners in the supply chain. The suppliers, logistics providers, transporters, third party warehouses, customers, inventory warehouses, retail agents, and anyone else involved in the supply chain all have real time access to the information.

Due to this, it is very possible for executives to make decisions that will easily improve the efficiency of their companies to a very great extent.
The major requirements of a good Control Tower platform are:

1. Easy to Access
2. Easy to Maintain
3. Available to all the parties in the supply chain
4. Monitors supply chain for exceptions like delays and raises an alarm well in advance
5. Provides Industry standard Key Performance Indicators and Measurements
6. Available on Mobile platforms so that people can access on the go
7. Latest technology based
8. Tightly Integrated to the main ERP / Accounting system

The next question that might be raised would be about how difficult it would be to develop a Control Tower platform for each company.

The easiest answer to this would not re-invent the wheel.The easiest answer would be to use a platform already easily available on the market. 

TpSynergy.com (www.tpsynergy.com) provides one of the easy to use Supply chain control towers. Check out the details at their website