IBM shares best practices from manufacturing technology leaders.
In a global survey, 84% of chief supply chain officers stated that “lack of visibility” across their supply chain was the “biggest challenge” they are currently facing.
by Jennifer Van Cise for Industry Week
photo: ThinkStock/Getty Images
Manufacturers continue to face significant challenges. Cost pressures, complex regulations, learning how to use disruptive technologies and the increasingly costly delivery of goods and raw resources combine with ongoing process and communications changes to muddy visibility across the supply chain.
We’re well into the fourth industrial revolution, described by the World Economic Forum as the “industry’s greatest change in 100 years,” yet years of over-reliance on paper forms and disparate technology systems has contributed to costly transport mistakes and delays for manufacturers. Spreadsheets and paper-based record-keeping are still prominent across many aspects of supply and logistics, making information difficult to trace, confirm and secure.
In a global survey, 84% of chief supply chain officers stated that “lack of visibility” across their supply chain was the “biggest challenge” they are currently facing.
Modern technology provides part of the solution.
Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, describes the Fourth Industrial Revolution as “characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human.”
Building from past success, today’s leading manufacturers are using these new technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and blockchain, to help them improve visibility, avoid disruption, respond more rapidly and build better supply chains.
Improve Visibility to Avoid Disruption
Whether it is a parts shortage or goods stuck in transit, logistics disruptions can quickly cascade to negatively impact entire business ecosystems.
AI-based systems can alert manufacturers to shipment delays in advance, giving them time to initiate a resolution and get ahead of the disruption. This takes trust in new technology to build a better system that will not only avoid disruptions as much as possible, but mitigate those that do arise.
