Facing an increasingly complex regulatory climate, manufacturers are beginning to want enhanced visibility to help meet compliance directives related to trade practices, environmental mandates and upcoming serialization and track-and-trace laws.

Providing a more accurate, real-time picture of demand signals or supplier inventory levels is the focus of most manufacturers’ supply chain visibility projects. But facing an increasingly complex regulatory climate, manufacturers are beginning to want enhanced visibility to help meet compliance directives related to trade practices, environmental mandates and upcoming serialization and track-and-trace laws.

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Most manufacturers are still using spreadsheets, homegrown databases, even manual processes to retrieve and manage this data with their supply chain. Increasingly, however, a variety of enterprise systems — from supply chain offerings to product lifecycle management (PLM) suites — are adding functionality to help manufacturers automate these processes and more effectively track and improve the environmental performance of their products.

Forthcoming environmental regulations around carbon emissions will be the real game changer for manufacturers, stepping up the need for visibility solutions to aid in meeting compliance. “If you look at what Walmart is mandating in terms of having to reduce the carbon footprint of the products that are offered in Walmart stores, visibility is a huge part of being able to track that information because there are so many parties involved in creating one product’s carbon footprint,” said Amy Drevna, senior vice president of marketing for One Network.

Read more: Enhancing supply chain visibility to achieve compliance