In the last few years, navigating disruption has become the central theme for many industries. Unprecedented challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Suez Canal blockage, the Russia-Ukraine war and a multitude of natural disasters brought on lasting impacts that are expected to persist in the future.
Supply chains took the hardest hit. Even after four years, the industry still hasn’t been able to recover to pre-pandemic levels. From port backlogs to shifting consumer behaviour, it is now more urgent than ever to rethink traditional planning systems.
Now, planning for long-term resilience and agility is the name of the game.
Building supply chain resilience and agility
Companies moving forward must begin evaluating their supply chain risks to effectively mitigate and manage them. This must paired with fuller understanding of your baseline, improved forecasting during periods of high demand volatility, better supplier and customer relations, as well as embracing the use of technology and automation.
At the recently concluded Supply Chain Planning and Logistics Summit 2022, over 40 leading experts in the supply chain space discussed how businesses can navigate disruption with optimised planning and logistics frameworks. The two-day event saw more than 500 attendees from across a broad range of industries join in on panel discussions, networking and sessions across two streams.
Digitalisation is a non-negotiable step to survive the next wave of disruption. Investing in end-to-end supply chain visibility will provide a clear view of inventory and activity from manufacturer to end consumer, help limit disruptions, mitigate and manage risk. But to reap its full benefits, this information must be trackable in real-time. Technologies such as digital twin and control tower can help businesses gain advanced insights that pave the way to operational efficiency and ultimately, a more optimised supply chain.
For CouriersPlease, a franchised parcel delivery service and subsidiary of Singapore Post, using innovative Internet of Things (IoT) technology has tracked, located and recovered hundreds of CP parcel cages. Over the last six months, the company said they have almost eliminated cage losses.
Navigating shifting demand and consumer behaviour
Retail has been undoubtedly one of the hardest hit industries during the pandemic. Every aspect had been virtually affected, from the changing role of brick-and-mortar stores to reimagining the distribution network, with the changes here to say.
For retailers, the conversation has moved on from optimising supply chains to inventory management and making supply chains more resilient and flexible.
“Legacy systems are no longer calling the shots,” said Rendr Chief Commercial Officer Michael Fowler in a LinkedIn post.
Fowler was moderator and speaker at this year’s Retail Fulfilment Summit, the biggest gathering on retail fulfilment in the country, which aims to advance the capacity, flexibility and speed of retailers’ fulfilment strategy to meet increased demand. Over 500 retail professionals attended to hear the latest insights, strategies and technology trends from 50+ leading retail fulfilment and eCommerce experts.
This challenging period has also put the biggest emphasis on customer experience and its changing needs. We’re now entering a sensory revolution thanks to the pandemic, which has rearranged the way we experience our world and environment. Apart from dealing with customers’ decreasing attention span, the industry also had to navigate new experiences such as emotional plurality and compassion fatigue, which was both dealt with at an external and internal level due to the increasing popularity of super tasking and the work-from-home setup.
In one of the panel discussions during the Retail Fulfilment Summit, Officeworks Head of Supply Chain Transformation, Tom Weinmann shared how using new online platform helped their team make work-from-home easy, as well as their recently commissioned Victorian Customer Fulfilment Centre in Derrimut featuring the latest in AMR Technology by Körber.
An era of disruption and innovation
The future is no longer business as usual. The challenges from the last few years have made permanent changes and the way forward is data-driven. With the growing complexity of the global supply chain, we need strong data and analytics capabilities to get a comprehensive understanding of our goods and services, our exposure, vulnerabilities and potential losses, in order to develop a confident and rapid response to any future challenge. At Akolade’s upcoming Supply Chain Innovation Summit, now rebranded as SC Edge, all talks will be on how supply chains are becoming all about cutting-edge technology, systems and processes.
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