Supply chains coordinate and balance people, activities and resources to make and move a product to deliver to customers. It involves the coordination and flow of goods, cash and information. The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling more and faster information across the supply chains for better decisions, planning and execution.
We see innovation thriving right now. Today, a lot of operations people have their hands full just keeping the plants and assets running; if we free those hands then more time will be available to improve understanding through analytics. A typical problem is that 90% of the data that people have never gets used; we can describe it as being like oil, it has value, and that value has to be extracted, and then mined for insights.
Who are the best people with the best results? How are they accomplishing those results? How can their processes be captured? And how can others be advised and trained to do the same? These are questions that can be answered when more than just 10% of data is actually crunched.
New market opportunities are available to companies in almost every industry from the data that IoT can deliver. With IoT becoming much more affordable, companies are embedding IoT sensors in their products that "phone home" with status updates. Now a new service is able to be provided for proactive support and this requires people and activities be instituted to provide this support.
Opportunities for Smarter Supply Chains:
1. IoT can enable companies to achieve better predictability of demand through real-time visibility of demand and service signals. IoT enhances this system by enabling real time visibility and tracking of inventory, which can result in reduced inventory and spoilage or expiration of products.
2. IoT can address compliance and regulatory reporting requirements such as traceability, emissions, country of origin and to track shipped items for the purpose of returns, warranties and predictive support of failing items.
3. IoT can provide more advanced insight into the effectiveness of equipment and other operating assets can now see and track their entire production facility virtually. In addition, environmental conditions and equipment operating conditions can be monitored to ensure that the equipment is being operated properly and prevent unforeseen machine failures. Organizations that have assets external to their facility, such as trucks or other moving assets, can easily track the location, status and availability of these remote assets.
4. IoT embedded in products can send real time customer feedback to manufacturers on the usage, success and failure of a product. An IoT enabled product that you sell to your customers could communicate back to your maintenance organization the current status, diagnostic information, and available quantity of consumables.
5. IoT can enhance the S&OP process by providing real-time visibility to all the key dimensions for success--demand, supply, inventory, product, risk, and performance--across the organization and throughout the extended supply chain.
6. The triple bottom line of people, profit and planet has never been more important than it is today. IoT enabled sustainable operations can provide real-time visibility to energy and resource consumption and resource or material movement. This can result in the reduction of carbon inefficiencies, minimised energy consumption, less waste with "recycle-reuse-refurbish" materials, and optimised travel and transportation.
7. IoT applications can help companies monitor atmosphere, radioactivity, sound, pressure, temperature, etc. using remote sensors to ensure the safety of your workers.
8. IoT can provide significant opportunities for companies to deliver value and improve performance through better predictability, adaptability, innovation, alignment and sustainability across the value chain. There is a clear call to action for supply chain professionals to explore, understand and exploit IoT for enhanced supply chain performance.
To that end, supply chain executives must come up to speed on IoT rapidly, specifically:
• Understand how IoT can benefit your supply chain and enterprise through real time information visibility enabled through integration of Machine to Machine (M2M) and Device to Application (D2A) models.
• Analyse your current gaps and identify specific supply chain use cases that will demonstrate quick wins for your enterprise.
• Deploy or pilot specific IoT-enabled solutions to ensure success and realise key benefits.
• Develop an enterprise-wide deployment plan and architecture with use cases to further leverage IoT capabilities across processes and company. This includes data storage and analytic tools to handle the large amounts of sensor data.
• Scale globally with IoT business partners ready to further improve your supply chain processes and transform your supply chain for the 21st century.
As the businesses become more and more tied to the IoT, it will be absolutely necessary to understand and invest in robust security. SMB’s are exposed to over 4200 cyber-attacks each day in the U.S. Take advantage of the IoT, but be prepared and be smart about it.
What are you doing to embrace the Internet of Things and the opportunities it presents your Supply Chain?
Regards
Dave Food