1. Companies mean different things by the term For some companies, it means replacing manual, paper and pencil processes with digital data and process support. For some companies it means using autonomous mobile robots and other forms of robotics in their supply chain. For some, it means applying machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to supply chain Big Data. And for some, it means getting better digital data to support an end to end supply chain involving multiple tiers of a company’s supply chain.
2. If a company is focused on digital projects designed to substitute manual processes that exist inside the four walls of the enterprise, that company’s digital and supply chain efforts are immature. For example, putting a warehouse management system in to replace paper and pencil data in the warehouse would be a limited form of digitization. It is something companies should have done years ago.
3. However, if jumping on the digital bandwagon allows supply chain executives to get money for warehouse management systems or similar internally facing supply chain solutions, I’m all in favor of it. Supply chain technologies typically have a payback of less than two years and are critical building blocks to building robust capabilities.
4. Filling in the information black holes that exist in most companies end to end supply chains would be a digital transformation project that is operating at a much higher level of maturity. This means connecting with suppliers, customers, and key supply chain partners up and down multiple tiers of a company’s extended supply chain.
5. Whether a company if focused on robotics, filling information data gaps inside the four walls of their enterprise, or getting better digital data to supply the end to end supply chain, AI and machine learning will have a role to play.
6. For an extended supply chain, digitally connecting to trading partners is critical. A new market known as Supply Chain Collaboration Networks (SCCN) has emerged to facilitate this. This market garners over $3 billion in annual revenues and is growing at a double-digit rate according to market research from the ARC Advisory Group.
7. A supply chain collaboration network is a collaborative solution for supply chain processes built on a public cloud, many-to-many architecture which supports a community of trading partners. Many-to-many refers to both many participants in a network able to collaborate with many other partners, and many participants being able to access many, many sources of normalized event data critical to supply chain operations.