Across industries and across the globe, supply chain disruption has become the new norm. However, tech-savvy supply chain executives are deploying digital tools for increasing agility, improving resilience, and ultimately reducing the potentially catastrophic impacts of supply chain disruption. Recent research identifies four key strategies that successful supply chain managers are adopting, including:
In this article, we'll review tech-savvy strategies and digital tools for successfully reducing the impacts of logistical bottlenecks, rising costs, supplier and labor shortages, and other pervasive elements of supply chain disruption. We will also look at new digital tools for boosting supply chain management and agility at potentially explosive (Zone 1) work sites.
A recent Deloitte survey of over 200 manufacturing executives focuses on the impacts of supply chain disruption. The following four strategies emerged from the survey, highlighting new approaches and digital tools for successfully reducing supply chain disruption.
According to Deloitte, manufacturing executives are solving current supply chain disruption by "leveraging four familiar mitigation strategies to balance resilience with efficiency. But they are also wielding new skill sets and tools to manage the tougher constraints of rising costs, labor shortages, and logistics bottlenecks to achieve agility."
Strong relationship management skills are crucial. Strengthening relationships with your existing suppliers fosters partnerships for forecasting and managing inventory costs, lead times, shortages, and other critical factors.
Organizations that engage multiple suppliers, especially regionally diverse suppliers, are less affected by supply chain disruption than those with suppliers concentrated in a single region. U.S. manufacturing executives increasingly prefer domestic sourcing, as well.
A full 78% of Deloitte survey respondents agreed that digital capabilities increase supply chain agility, visibility, and transparency. Digital integration and management of supply chain networks, adoption of AI for advanced analytics, and value stream mapping are among the more prevalent digital tools deployed.
Deploying innovative virtual solutions, such as digital twin technology, helps expose bottlenecks, shortages, and underlying inefficiencies. It also assists the decision-making process regarding costs, inventory, suppliers, facilities, contracts, logistics, and more. However, only intrinsically safe (IS) digital tools and devices are legal in areas with combustible atmospheres, because they are incapable of generating sparks. Standard smart devices and electronics are illegal in these Zone 1 areas, because they can cause dangerous explosions. Deploying certified IS solutions for Zone 1 supply chain optimization requires specialized expertise. Rather than attempting to develop such skills and experience in-house, many organizations prefer partnering with a recognized authority on Zone 1 enterprise-scale digital transformation.
