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Emerging Supply Chain Trends For 2019

Posted by Land Link on Feb 14, 2019 12:29:29 PM

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Supply chain protocols worldwide are being transformed. External pressures, technology trends and internal evolution are prompting companies to reevaluate their network to determine how their future supply chain should be structured, both in terms of capacity and capabilities. Let’s look at the four main areas of transformation potentially impacting your supply chain.

Emerging Technologies: Drones, autonomous intelligence and robotic automation will eventually transform warehousing and transportation, which will create networks that may look and operate very differently from those of today. Technology-driven Supply Chain protocols will dominate logistics in the coming years.

Supply Chain Visibility: The Internet of Things, Big Data and data transparency will improve an organizations’ ability to gain visibility on the real-time status of their supply chain network, thus giving them the ability to not only rapidly respond to problems but more importantly, anticipate and prevent them more effectively. Data abundance will be used to draw insights on both short-term and long-term improvements to the supply chain and beyond using statistical analysis.

Sharing Economy: On-demand warehousing and on-demand logistics will allow organizations to be more flexible in how they operate their supply chain. Lower capital expenditure and higher adaptability will likely be attractive for organizations that are in rapidly evolving industries. In 2014 the size of the shared economy was estimated to be 14 billion dollars. By 2025 it is estimated to grow to 335 billion.

Measure The Potential Impact On the Existing Supply Chain
With these broad trends in mind, organizations must constantly track select metrics like warehouse utilization levels, actual customer service level, cost to serve/profitability of product categories, and use of stop-gap measures to determine if there is an ongoing impact on revenue growth and operating margin. We must carefully consider the factors impacting a supply chain design. Examining the external trends, measuring key supply chain metrics and evaluating the network against the business strategy, usually determines that the supply chain requires some or even major overhaul. This is precisely where a qualified 3PL can provide expertise in data analysis and supply chain design. Land Link is expertly qualified to compile and evaluate key metrics in your supply chain performance and determine to what extent these emerging technologies may improve your existing supply chain protocols. Contact us for more information. 

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Topics: Industry Trends, Big Data