Mitigate supply chain issues

with short- and long-term solutions

Short-term supply chain mitigation

With today’s supply constraints, simply sourcing the parts and products for your builds requires diligence, agility, and a deep understanding of data center market trends. The best IDCS partners will have both short- and long-term strategies for ensuring you are always aware of the product marketplace, able to quickly pivot to available alternatives, and can deploy your data center within a timeline that works with you, rather than against you.

Stay aware of what’s in stock

In the short term, daily what’s in stock (WIS) inventory sheets are a best practice for alerting you to changes and opportunities in sourcing your products. By leveraging WIS reports from the right IDCS partner, you can gain access to:

Inventory analyses across the data center channel, including from HPE, Dell, Microsoft, Cisco, and more
Warehouse storage for future consumption of channel products
3-5 availability alerts per week for products that match your specs
Out-of-stock dates and inventory availability based on customer forecasting
The ability to hold products that fit your standards
At least 9-12 months of standard SKU inventory, until the market normalizes

Get ahead of constraints with frequent demand forecasting

Frequent demand forecasting allows your trusted IDCS partner to pre-purchase items with long lead times, minimizing disruptions in the integration process. When consistent delivery lead times are mission-critical for your deployment, frequent demand forecasting can help reduce the impact of supply chain delays and product availability shortfalls.

Working with your IDCS partner who has a full history and inventory of your organization's previous purchases is a key enabler for proactive demand forecasting.

_{SHI Global Integration Data Center Services}

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“Just in case” versus “Just in time”

Forecasting-based pre-purchasing is a collaborative process between the integration partner, customer, OEMs, and distributors to maintain appropriate stock levels and inform purchasing timelines.

As a trusted IDCS partner, SHI recommends pre-purchasing based on two principles:

Just in case

Bulk purchases of required low-dollar consumables and commodities to ensure minimal production delays. Some examples include: cables, small form-factor pluggables (SFPs), label stock

Just in time

A timed replenishment of CapEx purchases or purchases with a time-sensitive warranty.
Some examples include: servers, storage, networking

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Long-term supply chain mitigation

Large scale, global data center projects inevitably require months of planning, designing, building, and deployment. That’s why you and your integration partner must have a long-term strategy for combating supply chain constraints – because having this lengthy process further delayed by an unpredictable supply chain could turn your mission-critical deployment into a mission failure.

Protected customer-only inventory is a long-term supply chain solution that takes the guesswork out of sourcing parts for your builds. Functioning in tandem with demand forecasting and pre-purchasing, protected customer inventory reserves the parts you need for months at a time. This method includes:

A customer-specific inventory with a viewable online inventory portal
Weekly supply availability meetings with OEMs and distributors
Minimum of three-to-four months of protected, on-hand inventory at integration warehouses

Weekly supply chain and industry trends updates with customer management
Three months of protected inventory at key distributors
A guaranteed minimum notification period of three months before out-of-stock issues occur

_{SHI Global Integration Data Center Services}

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Global integration centers

While it is a recommended best practice, protected customer inventory cannot function effectively if your trusted IDCS partner doesn’t have the warehouse capabilities required to store, organize, and configure your unique equipment.

SHI supports data center programs for global organizations through a worldwide network of integration centers. The flagship of SHI’s IDCS operations is Ridge, dedicated to bringing your largest data center projects to life. Ridge includes a massive amount of storage space and industry-leading asset organization, allowing for months of dedicated inventory reserved for your deployment. In addition to inventory storage, SHI’s state-of-the-art capabilities include: