Unpredictable Supply Chain
Chris Bennett
EMEA Business Development Director, Driving the importance of a Digital Network approach to Supply Chain
It’s the year 2 million BC, you’re standing next to your friend, Brian, on the great plains of Pangea, and yes, you’re a Dinosaur, no offence. You and Brian are happily grazing when the ground beneath your feet starts to shake, both confused you raise your head to see what the issue is..........BANG, a giant meteorite has hit the earth. You along with all other Dinosaurs have been obliterated. What could you and Brian have done to prevent this and survive?
Answer......nothing, you didn’t have the technology to spot the meteorite plummeting towards earth, nor the technology to destroy it or knock it off its course.
Interestingly that technology does now exist today and was recently demonstrated.
The below graphic is a representation of a companies Supply Chain, that's a lot of complexity and meteorites flying around.
Data is the key to protecting yourself, you have the asset, the question is are you using it to protect yourself from unpredictable events.
Today Supply Chain technology can identify and resolve disruptions before they impact your business by leveraging the data that already exists across the Supply Chain. How many small and large meteorite’s hit your business because of unpredictable events, and if you had the technology to spot and resolve these, how valuable would that be.
The notion of using Data to bring resiliency is not new and companies have been doing this for a long time, as to how well depends on the approach they have taken.
The reality is that the Supply Chain is not a Chain, but a Network and if you take as the key foundation to your data approach you're on the right track.
The next few years will huge for Supply Chain in the wake of the realisation that disruptions can be so damaging, no matter where they occur, being connected to your immediate trading partners is not enough, a change at the raw material level ripples though the Network and by the time it reaches you it's become a tsunami.