How to Use Technology to Cope with The Supply Chain Slowdown

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How to use technology to cope with the Supply
Chain Slowdown
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Introduction Thomas Friedman once said, Supply
chains cannot tolerate even 24 hours of
disruption. So if you lose your place in the
supply chain because of wild behavior, you could
lose a lot. It would be like pouring cement down
one of your oil wells. There is no doubt that
supply chain logistics are one of the most
essential fuels to the survival of any
organization or country. An unobstructed supply
chain ascertains that everything reaches where it
is required when it is required. Any disruption
in the process may severely impact the
capabilities of the end users. Even before the
COVID-19 pandemic shaped up, the supply chain
logistics sector was dealing with a lot of
uncertainties due to the ongoing US-China trade
war, Brexit, and economic slowdown. The outbreak
has accelerated whatever would be the results of
these factors.  Over the past 18 years, Chinas
trade share has more than doubled in the global
economic ecosystem. It represents 16 of the
world GDP and is a supply hub for a majority of
the organizations. When the outbreak initially
came into light in Wuhan, several companies
halted production lines, factories were shut
down, as the entire city came into a
standstill. Automobile manufacturers such as Fiat
Hyundai announced temporary closures of
production at their factories due to the
disruptions in the supply chain caused by the
outbreak in China.  
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The supply chain industry is always the most
vulnerable to force majeure. The COVID-19
outbreak revealed major weaknesses in the global
supply chains. Given the criticality of a
well-functioning supply chain, it is imperative
that organizations focus on building resilience
against such unavoidable crisis and developing
stronger sourcing strategies. Companies should
stop relying on a single source and try to bring
in flexibility, which may come to rescue in
events like these. In such unprecedented events,
those companies who have resilience against
change, agility to respond, and the ability to
continue their business emerge stronger on the
other end. Let us discuss how technology can play
a major part in this transformational
process.  Predicting the unpredictable The
COVID-19 outbreak is unprecedented, certainly.
However it is not that the supply chains havent
faced such disruptions before. Taking lessons
from such events, General Motors have extensively
mapped their supply chains to understand their
suppliers, global sites, subcontractors, source
of origin of the parts as well as the route. Such
a sort of detailed mapping enables GM
to determine the impact of any possible
disruption on their supply chain could be
impacted in the coming days, weeks,  months. 
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  Having a prior knowledge of the source of
disruption the impact of disruption, companies
can have an upper hand in terms of lead time to
exercise mitigation strategies such as stocking
up inventory, arranging substitute supply
sources, and so on. With the advancements in
digital solutions and popularity of automation,
the costs of mapping and monitoring have reduced
considerably over the last ten years. Building an
autonomous supply chain can help decrease the
reliance on inventory, human resources, manual
processes while fostering agility, flexibility,
and speed. Industry 4.0, smart manufacturing, and
autonomous delivery vehicles all these digital
solutions may still be at a rather nascent stage,
however they have the potential to improve the
efficiency decrease the overall costs of supply
chain management.  Digital acceptance to build
resilience By deploying necessary digital
solutions, business leaders can not only improve
productivity but also imbibe autonomy in their
supply chain for identifying, forecasting, and
fixing a problem. The worlds largest dedicated
online grocery retailer is using advanced
autonomous supply chain processes based on
machine learning to forecast predict the
outbound demand for more than 50,000 different
products. James Gralton, Engineering director of
logistics supply chain at the company says, We
currently generate over 20 million forecasts each
day. This helps us to react rapidly to a
multitude of common and exceptional supply
issues.  Read Full Blog at https//www.cigniti.
com/blog/supply-chain-slowdown-covid-technology/

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