A defining challenge for any supply
chain is to be able to be flexible enough to quickly adapt to changing circumstances
and estimate the demand with a greater accuracy. No supply chain can meet these
challenges without understanding technologies that provide different tools and opportunities
in this context. The next big thing in the domain of technology and information
that can revolutionize the way businesses operate is Big Data.
This data has everything: From
data from social networking websites, Emails, e-Commerce websites, blogs etc.
to data streams resulting from RFID tags embedded in supply chain and real time
POS data in the stores. Also, these days, people collecting data consider every
click on the internet to be a source of some useful information, in the hope of
understanding consumer behavior and making use of it for businesses.
Big data also holds information
on coupons, change in price and discounts and geographic information which can
be used to manage demand by deploying right amounts of inventory. According to
the industry pundits this data can also be used for evaluating price and
other incentives to improve profitability, manage seasonal ramp-downs, and
reduce the need for clearance events.[i] This data also enables demand
collaboration with the suppliers. A very good example for this kind of
collaboration is P&G and Wal-Mart sharing the POS data to collaborate
better.
With all these advantages of big data
it is less likely the companies turn a blind eye to this phenomenon. But the
question is whether conventional data storage would cope with such huge amounts
of additional data? Since we discussed cloud services in class, I would like to know whether cloud could be a solution to this problem.
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