In 2020, supply chains are undergoing their biggest transformation yet. Here are the four technologies that are changing supply chains this year.
1. Green Logistics
Green logistics are becoming majorly important in supply chains. Implementing renewable technology and sustainable sourcing is attractive to a growing amount of consumers. Transportation is the second largest source of greenhouse emissions after electricity, and this will need to be handled by supply chain owners in the coming years.
Fundamentally, green technologies will mitigate environmental damage, improve ethical impact, and create more ways of supporting communities that play a part in the supply chain. This will give way to the circular supply chain, whereby many materials produced are infinitely recycled, gaining long-term profit for both company and consumer.
2. Blockchain For Supply Chains
Blockchain technology will be the framework that drives digitally transforming supply chains. It brings in multiple aspects of transformation, including ethics, security, transparency and sustainability, and provides a platform through which they can be accessed.
Blockhead Technologies has created blockchain-backed STAMP Supply, designed to bring transparency and accountability into supply chain tracking. It centralizes your supply chain data in one place, allowing easy understanding, analysis and accessibility for decision makers.
Blockchain brings the benefit of being transparent, traceable and, above all, secure. It is resistant to issues such as fraud, incorrect reporting and unexplained loss or miscalculations. This will, in the future, save supply chain owners millions of dollars.
3. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence and machine learning will replace several occupations that humans currently do. However, this will open up different jobs for those workers, such as supervision and remote monitoring.
AI will, in turn, make supply chains more efficient, productive and ultimately profitable. Smart supply chains will be the future of logistics, and they will be largely autonomous and intelligent, allowing workers to maintain more productive and problem solving-based roles. Companies will be able to automate tasks that are less productive and considered to be wasting time.
4. Big Data
Supply chains deal with an immense amount of data. This data often goes lost or unused, because companies don’t have the systems to deal with it. Blockchain technology can help us to secure and trace that data. However, this doesn’t allow us to analyse it in a way that makes it useful to companies.
McKinsey discusses ‘big supply-chain analytics’, which uses data and quantitative methods to improve decision making across the supply chain. This provides new insights across supply chains to improve decision making from ‘front-line operations, to strategic choices, such as the selection of the right supply chain operating models.’
Ensuring that you have the right data analytical system is vital to maintaining a smooth and efficient supply chain. STAMP Supply centralises your data in one place and allows easy analysis. Your supply chain data is also backed by blockchain technology. STAMP Supply integrates with any pre-existing systems so you don’t have overturn your company processes to implement it.
You can find out about STAMP Supply here or contact us for a demo here.