Gartner unveils 2022 Power of the Profession Supply Chain Award winners

Gartner has announced the winners of its Power of the Profession Supply Chain Awards, which celebrates community-selected recognitions of the most innovative supply chain initiatives of the year.

The awards featured four categories on technology or process innovation, customer or patient innovation, social impact and people breakthroughs, and one award for the best submission overall.

“Gartner’s Power of the Profession Award winners show that supply chain organisations are continuously innovating – even in times of ongoing disruption,” said Eric O’Daffer, vice president analyst with the Gartner Supply Chain practice.

“They also show that innovation is intentional and built systematically over a period of time as part of the overall strategy,” O’Daffer said.

Pfizer emerged as the overall winner.

The company bagged the Supply Chain Breakthrough of the Year award with its submission for Customer or Patient Innovation of the Year: “Deep Freezing the Supply Chain to Bring COVID-19 Vaccine to the World.”

During the height of the pandemic, Pfizer faced several challenges to store and ship the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine it had developed with BioNTech.

As a results, Pfizer developed a new shipper box with reusable packaging that was suited for shipping the vaccine from ultralow temperature freezers to vaccine distribution centers’ cold storage worldwide.

This required moving the product across multiple supply chain partners in record time with complete, accurate and real-time visibility on location and quality characteristics of every dose. The shipper box kept the product at a stable temperature for 10 days. A new type of data logger allowed for real-time tracking of location, temperature and humidity.

These efforts enabled Pfizer to continuously deliver at 99.998% on-time to date.

Scneider Electric was also recognised as Process or Technology Innovation of The Year for its “Adaptive Machine Learning Driver ‘Self-Healing’ Supply Chain” submission.

Schneider had developed a self-healing digital supply chain platform, driven by adaptive machine learning (ML) to optimise performance-related parameters such as safety stock quantity, minimum order quantities and lead times on a real-time basis.

The platform resulted in savings of more than €100 million.

For People Breakthrough of the Year, Shell’s “Using Smartwatches to Improve Employee Safety” submission was hailed as the winner.

Shell Brazil has tested a feature of a smartwatch that’s capable of predicting accidents. The feature measures and predicts fatigue and interacts with users.

The technology provides the ability to monitor workers on site, which can lead to valuable determinations around repetitive movements and systemic issues in processes, ultimately leading to a safer workplace. It’s a nontraditional use of technology to substantially benefit people, specifically in the supply chain.

For Social Impact of the Year, Microsoft won for its submission: “Circularity at Scale — A Zero Waste Plan for Every Part.”

Circularity enables Microsoft’s sustainability goals by creating regenerative and restorative cycles for everything it produces. The company’s Circular Centers aim to achieve circularity at scale with a zero waste plan for every part.

Over the past year, the Circular Center model has achieved 83% reuse and 17% recycle of critical parts while reducing carbon emissions by 145,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

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