Emerson gains supply chain responsiveness and visibility with Oracle Cloud

In recent years, the global automation company focused on advanced equipment and software to support customers in essential industries such as water, power, and life sciences. The company is dedicated to helping those companies optimize operations, protect employees, and achieve sustainability goals, such as lowering carbon emissions..

Emerson wanted clearer information for improved control over its supply chain and better decision-making. The company needed supply chain data in a format that told a clear story, so experts could focus on solving problems instead of spending time hunting for data. For example, the company sought more visibility into which freight went to which transportation providers—something that’s especially important when complications such as natural disasters hit. The team wanted to consolidate more freight to cut costs and carbon emissions, as well as to better understand carbon emissions from a given transportation method. To achieve these goals, the company needed to integrate data from multiple sources along the supply chain, from raw materials procurement to customer delivery.

Emerson leaders recognized that they could use Oracle Transportation Management to help make sure the right carriers received the right freight and rates, and that products were reaching customers at the correct times. In addition, Oracle Fusion Data Intelligence Platform could also help the company make progress on its sustainability goals.

Oracle Transportation Management became the backbone for helping Emerson’s supply chain team select the right carrier mode and service level to move products. Using Fusion Data Intelligence Platform, users now get a clear summary of relevant supply chain activity and can quickly dig into the exceptions. In the past, employees would get a spreadsheet of data that they had to dig through to understand the status of their shipments.

Having visibility and options was particularly important to quickly mitigate supply chain disruptions. For instance, if a hurricane was approaching the Gulf of Mexico, Emerson’s team could use Oracle Transportation Management to reroute at-risk products that were already in transport. This agility proved especially useful during the pandemic, when the company used Oracle Transpiration Management to consolidate freight into charters coming out of China and into the US for domestic distribution. Emerson effectively expanded this consolidation strategy since then. In another instance, it relied on Transportation Management to reroute freight after volcanoes erupted in Iceland, disrupting air transport.

Fusion Data Intelligence Platform provided deeper visibility into cost and performance of freight moving through the company's supply chain. Emerson also used the analytics platform to measure emissions at the shipment level and look for ways to reduce them.