Digital Supply Chain (DSC) will be the most challenged model in the future. In order to compete in this dynamic global economy, and to serve customers’ numerous needs, SC teams within an organisation should be open-minded and flexible to adopt a DSC strategy that releases the potential of their supply chains to generate growth. This digital era has changed the way of doing business.
How can a Digital Supply Chain give you the most?
Hiring the right kind of people, needed to execute the DSC in your companies, is fundamental. A skilled-organised and focused workforce will be required to enable an effective and capable DSC. As investors and asset managers spend an increasing amount of their day on digital platforms, collaboration among all the stakes holder should be an opportunity to educate a mutually efficient workforce.
Benefits, as a result of digitalising your Supply Chain in the coming years.
• Avoids expensive costs involving flights, hotels, meals, and conference fees for executives.
• Get situational awareness and context-sensitive decision making.
• Becomes customer-driven, personalised, agile, and responsive.
• Digital delivery services and business models capture more value every day.
• Provides companies in all industries to reach their desired audience at scale, as consumers now are tied to their phones or any digital device.
• Applies Analytics, monitoring of goods, vehicles and other assets via the IoT.
• Information replaces inventory.
• Processes with paper will be replaced by doing things digitally.
• Gives you network-based, end-to-end visibility solutions.
• Need of analysts and of more digitalised-technology executives.
• Gives you the ability to reflect and react to what’s going on in the real-world Supply Chain.
• Tracks the condition or location of goods.
• Counts on a sensor or real-time traffic data to spot trends—and trigger appropriate changes.
• Visualises and understands the activities and events of multiple players.
• Awareness will bring scenario-based contingency planning.
• Ensures the process proceeds with integrity.
• Improves your processes outside your company.
• A planning and analytics platform to determine a bad scenario, and act rapidly.
Are you ready for digital?
Some of these digital technologies will be disruptive, requiring to build a DSC workforce within DCs able to maintain and reap the most productivity from robotics. Enough people to figure out how to adapt these digital processes and autonomous vehicles, and who optimise them.
Transportation Management System is an IoT tool to monitor shipment information, separates relevant exceptions from data; a contingency-based scenario planning is driven by specialised-logistic software. A more capable real-time monitoring of trucks, vehicles and goods in transit via the IoT, as the number, complexity of sensors infrastructure improves. They’re smarter and more capable of monitoring different conditions; governments are embedding fibre optic cable and sensors to create “smart roads” that can help locate roadblock or weather conditions.
The term “Final-mile” is often used by Transportation Supply Chain teams, and it describes the transportation of goods via freight rail or container ships from a certain port or hub to its final destination. Final-mile problems include the challenge of making deliveries in urban areas to retail stores, restaurants, and other merchants in district that is often blockage triggering safety problems: routing, scheduling, real-time delivery progress, fuel cost, fleet efficient customer-service focused, will be solved with smart road networks and infrastructure, and smarter sensors in trucks.
Summary: A Digital Supply Chain change in your organisation will keep the step with e-commerce growth; the way you can operate, design and build a warehouse will be transformed. Embracing Robotics, Automation and Predictive Analytics processes will reduce labour needs, but the agility and efficiency that comes with them is a great opportunity for companies to gain a significant competitive advantage.
Dave Food
