A lot has happened across the globe in these past two years. The organizations are adopting new ways to conduct their daily operations in a desperate attempt to bring the new normal. The human population never backs down while facing a challenge; it invents new ways around and through the challenge. And yet again, accelerating innovation in the field of technology and quick adoption of agile methods has helped save the failing economy.
This year has been phenomenal in terms of the evolution of processes and operations followed by an organization. The importance of Supply Chain Management has become evident, and executives did give their all to develop complete environments for a pandemic-affected world.
According to a survey conducted by Gartner in 2020, the top five votes by Supply Chain Executives for what the opportunities are after a crisis were as shown:
Increase Supply Chain Agility (68%)
Accelerate Supply Chain Digitization (67%)
Strengthen Supplier Risk Management (59%)
Explore New Business Models (53%)
Shorten Supply Chain (41%)
Let us look at some of the most happening shifts that are adopted by the industries:
1) Importance of Industry New-comers and Integrated 3PL Services: A lot of start-ups and other third-party logistics businesses adopt technologies to provide smooth logistics management services to companies looking for SCM and Logistics services. One of the emerging goals across big organizations is to shorten their Supply Chain in return of higher efficiency and saved resources.
2) Supply Chain as a Service: SCaaS is a revolutionary new supply chain solution that helps firms to create a higher return on investment by working with a single service partner to cover all or part of their supply chain needs, such as procurement, manufacturing, quality control, and logistics.
3) A Mirrored World with the help of Digital Supply Chain Twin: A Supply Chain Digital Twin is a sophisticated simulation model of an actual supply chain that forecasts supply chain dynamics using real-time data and snapshots. Analysts can use this information to better understand the behaviour of a supply chain, predict unexpected circumstances, and devise a strategy.
4) Omni-Channel Presence, thanks to E-commerce: With the growing number of platforms via which customers may interact with businesses, being able to service clients across several channels is becoming increasingly vital. To give a superior customer service experience, omnichannel solutions provide one-touch integration across all channels.
5) Importance of Risk Management and Cybersecurity: Risk management is defined as the application of strategies to manage both ordinary and exceptional risks throughout the supply chain, based on constant risk assessment, with the goals of diminishing vulnerability and maintaining continuity. This is accomplished by creating and analysing what-if scenarios for all of the supply chain's vendors and procedures.
One of the most dangerous and common risks is cybersecurity with increased vulnerability due to digitization.
Lower-tier suppliers' inadequate cybersecurity procedures cause loss events and put supply chain partners at risk. Security vulnerabilities in the supply chain can be introduced by unpatched or improperly developed software. It is critical to ensure that similar tragedies do not occur.
Apart from these major trends, do look at the following figures as well!
If you are looking to deep dive into Supply Chain Management for this age and time, do look at Advanced Supply Chain Management and Analytics Course from IIM Kashipur. The programme aims to impart analytical and problem-solving skills necessary to develop solutions for a variety of supply chain management and design problems and develop an understanding for use of information technology in operations & supply chain optimization. The programme highlights how supply chain can make significant contribution to business results and how to cope up with uncertainties in supply chains.
The programme is designed specifically for working professionals to impart skills that are necessary in today’s dynamic world of supply chain management. Moreover, this programme will equip participants with the competencies in terms of improve forecasting, identify inefficiencies, respond better to customer needs, drive innovation and pursue breakthrough ideas. After completion of this programme, participants are expected to have real-time analysis based on interpretation of the data, better decision-making capabilities, and understanding of supply chain intelligence to avoid disruptions while supporting new business models. There are different pedagogical tools used such as case studies, optimization problems, and exercises to best deliver the course content.
