Supply Chain Control Tower
Move from reactive visibility to orchestrated execution across your end-to-end supply chain.
The Supply Chain Control Tower on the o9 Digital Brain enables organizations to sense disruption early, understand its true business impact, and act decisively across planning and execution. By combining real-time visibility, decision intelligence, and hyper-collaboration, the Control Tower transforms fragmented operations into a coordinated, outcome-driven operating model.
Today’s supply chains operate in an environment defined by constant disruption.
For most organizations, the most critical supply chain decisions happen in the 0–12 week operational window. Yet this is also where execution often breaks down. Siloed systems, fragmented data, and manual collaboration slow decision-making just as volatility accelerates.
Customer demand shifts, competitor activity, logistics disruptions, and supplier delays require immediate response to avoid stock-outs, excess inventory, penalties, or lost revenue. Traditional collaboration protocols — emails, spreadsheets, and ad hoc meetings — are no longer sufficient to manage this level of complexity.
From Visibility to Orchestration (Control Tower 2.0)
Early control towers focused primarily on visibility. Many were little more than digital war rooms or transportation dashboards, offering awareness but limited ability to act. These legacy approaches failed to connect planning with execution or to prescribe what should be done when issues arose.
The modern evolution — often referred to as Control Tower 2.0 — goes beyond visibility. It enables hyper-collaboration between planning, execution, and external partners, transforming insights into coordinated action. Instead of asking “What is happening?”, organizations can answer “What should we do now?” — and execute immediately.
What this solution enables
Sense and Translate Disruption
The o9 Control Tower continuously senses disruptions across internal and external data sources, including weather events, port congestion, supplier delays, and demand surges.
More importantly, it translates raw signals into business impact. Planners can immediately see which customer orders, shipments, or production plans are at risk and why. This turns real-time visibility into actionable knowledge rather than noise.Solve and Execute in One Flow
When exceptions arise, the Control Tower does not stop at alerts.
The platform prescribes multiple resolution options based on pre-configured scenarios — such as expediting, reallocating inventory, or reprioritizing orders — and enables users to execute decisions directly within the platform. This visibility layer sits on top of existing systems, breaking down functional silos and ensuring that decisions are both informed and executable.
What Makes o9 Different
Hyper-Collaboration Across the Value Chain
o9 enables structured, data-driven collaboration not only across internal teams but also with customers and suppliers.
This Customer Collaboration 2.0 model replaces fragmented email chains and spreadsheets with shared context, aligned priorities, and auditable decision trails. When exceptions occur, all stakeholders work from the same data and assumptions, dramatically reducing resolution time and friction.Pre-Alert Exception Management
Unlike legacy tools that react only after issues occur, the o9 Control Tower proactively identifies risks before they escalate.
For example, the platform can compare planner overrides against agreed-upon policies to detect early signs of misalignment between strategy and execution. By surfacing potential disconnects before they become urgent alerts, organizations can intervene earlier and avoid costly downstream consequences.
Industries Supported
Powered by the o9 Digital Brain
The Supply Chain Control Tower is powered by the o9 Digital Brain, which provides a shared visibility and decision layer across the enterprise.
Using the Enterprise Knowledge Graph (EKG), the platform integrates data from logistics systems, order management, suppliers, and thousands of external data sources. This creates a digital operating model that connects constraints, decisions, and outcomes end-to-end.
Rather than acting as another standalone dashboard, the Control Tower orchestrates planning and execution as a single, coordinated system.
Modular by design, enterprise by default
The Control Tower operates as a real-time nerve center, sitting above transactional systems to orchestrate decisions across planning, execution, and partners.
Core Building Blocks
Shared Visibility Layer
Aggregates data from ERPs, logistics, and order management systems into a single, real-time view of orders, inventory, and shipments.Sense & Translate Engine
Converts raw deviations and external disruptions into clear business impact, identifying exactly which orders, customers, or revenue streams are at risk.Collaboration Hub
Provides structured, in-platform communication across planning, execution, customer service, suppliers, and customers, replacing email-based coordination.
Advanced Building Blocks
Prescriptive Resolution Engine
AI-driven decision support recommends and executes actions such as inventory rebalancing or expediting directly into execution systems.Enterprise Knowledge Graph (EKG)
Models relationships between structured enterprise data and external signals to understand ripple effects across the supply chain.Pattern Recognition & Learning Loop
Learns from historical disruptions and planner actions to continuously refine policies, predictions, and execution responses.
Pre-built industry templates provide packaged logic and workflows that reduce time to value while remaining fully customizable.
A digital operating model for VUCA conditions
APEX is o9’s AI-powered operating model for enterprises navigating volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). It enables organizations to plan, execute, and learn as one connected system.
The o9 Digital Brain powers APEX by connecting enterprise data, knowledge, and decisions through a single intelligent model.
Collaborative Demand Planning is one of the building blocks of the Digital Brain. It contributes domain-specific capabilities into the enterprise-wide model that enables APEX from the ground up—linking this solution to decisions across the entire value chain.
→ Learn how the APEX Operating Model works
Where AI drives real decisions
Artificial intelligence enhances the Control Tower by improving prediction, diagnosis, and decision-making.
Predictive insights and pattern recognition enable the platform to forecast logistics transit times, supplier performance, and near-term demand while uncovering complex relationships that drive disruption.
Prescriptive intelligence recommends — and in many cases automates — the best course of action based on pre-defined trade-offs. Planners can weigh the cost of expediting against the penalty of missed deliveries and choose the option that best aligns with business priorities.
→ Learn more about o9 AI innovations
Results in real-world complexity
Automotive Supplier
This supplier faced significant fines from OEMs due to unmet delivery commitments and lacked visibility into material flows across its network.
By implementing the o9 Control Tower with Project44 integration, the company gained real-time insight into in-transit orders and material constraints. Standardized scenario planning (such as Premium vs. Standard freight) allowed planners to release inventory to production based on in-transit visibility rather than warehouse receipt, reducing inventory while improving service.
Food & Beverage Manufacturer
Processing more than 8,000 orders per day, this company relied heavily on manual planning and tribal knowledge, resulting in lost revenue and penalties.
By digitalizing decision logic and automating scenarios aligned with customer allocation rules and inventory aging risks, the organization achieved 93% touchless order planning, improved OTIF by 3–5%, and reduced inventory holdings by 7%.
What our customers say
Related solutions
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
A supply chain control tower is a centralized capability that monitors, analyzes, and orchestrates supply chain execution across orders, inventory, logistics, and partners in near real time.