SONIC MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGIES
“ WHEN TWO-THIRDS OF WHAT ’ S RUNNING THROUGH YOUR BUILDING IS COMPLETELY AUTOMATED , YOU HAVE AN AWFUL LOT OF CAPACITY TO WORK ON ORCHESTRATING THE SYSTEM ”
DAVID GINSBERG , VICE PRESIDENT OF SUPPLY CHAIN SONIC MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGIES
Skilled orchestrators will eventually be dual trained in purchasing and programming . ‘ I hired a supply chain engineer straight out of college ,’ says David . ‘ Her name is Niyati Patel , and she had a background in analytics , SQL , and strong interest in supply chain . Her job is 50 % purchasing and 50 % programming . And as a result , she gets to experience life exactly the way buyers do . She runs into the same problems . Then , she can take that frustration and go into the live database and code a solution .’
He emphasises that SQL — and really , just understanding how computer logic is structured — will be a critical skill for anyone working at the core of digital supply chains . ‘ We ’ re not talking about heavy-duty coding here . If you can select , update , add , and delete records , that simple type of programming is excellent .’
Partners in Success Just a month or two back , Sonic finally felt like it could announce that it had the first end-toend digital supply chain in electronics . ‘ The last piece was a change order process ,’ David says . ‘ With that , we finished automating end-toend , from planning to invoicing . From the start , Sonic had relied on several key partnerships within the industry . ‘ While we knew our data and our transactions and our business goals better than anyone , we needed outside help in literally linking to our suppliers ,’ he adds . ‘ So we partnered with Orbweaver — huge in the electronics and distribution space and a great fit . I managed the data within our four walls , and they transformed and shared it with our suppliers .’
Sonic ’ s first partner was Digi-Key , a leader in bringing new APIs to market , and soon after , Mouser . ‘ They ’ ve seen the same benefits ,’ David says . ‘ I can place over 30,000 line-items a year between them . If you ’ re thinking about
112 September 2021