Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Trends of Future Supply Chain management

The Future of supply chain management is a simple dilemma that every supply chain organization faces, many companies understand that firms who can improve on their supply chains to meet the every growing demands of the market, and uncertainties associated with the future market almost certainly would remain successful.
I came across a blog written by Adrian Gonzalez, talking about the a presentation titled "A vision of supply chain evolution" by  Tom Linton the Chief Procurement Office and Chief Supply Chain Officer at Flextronics, he talks about future Supply Chain trends and how their impact.

#10: Cloud Computing: Low cost and reliable cloud solutions for global supply chains are starting to emerge; “apps” will transform supply chains.
#9: Business Process Convergence: Instead of automating inefficient processes, companies will eliminate them — e.g., replace inter-company business documents such as purchase orders with sense-and-response systems; companies will more seamlessly integrate inter-company functions.
#8: Global Labor Costs Equalize: Labor arbitrage is in decline as labor costs in Mexico match China’s, and India, Ukraine, and Indonesia become more cost competitive.
#7: Raw Material Scarcity is driving innovation in materials, with companies replacing copper with aluminum, gold with copper, and steel with resin in certain cases. Companies will also need to better manage conflict minerals and rare earth metals.
#6: Skill Specialization: New supply chain skills will emerge, such as managing supply chains in the cloud, and undergraduate and MBA programs will become more specialized.
#5: Regional & Local Sourcing will expand and supply ecosystems will emerge as economies grow; “Made in USA” and “locally-sourced” will drive sourcing.
#4: Emergence of Control Towers as supply chains become more virtual (few or no factories). Supply chain winners will have a global footprint and be transparent, reliable, and flexible.
#3: Predictable Unpredictability: Predictability becomes a competitive advantage; supply chains break through barriers to become faster, more cost efficient, and safer.
#2: Corporate Social Responsibility Becomes Fundamental: It won’t be an option any more, policies expand globally, emerging country laws catch up, and foreign corporations will follow global norms.
#1: “Non-Zero” Supply Chains Win: In other words, supply chains focused on greater collaboration between everyone in the ecosystem will win. This will result in end-to-end supply chain solutions that will create new value for customers.


After reading this excerpt I must say that I agree with the  trends listed above maybe not in the particular order stated. The evolution of the Global market  and the increase in demands of consumers would initiate many of these trends. For example Tom talks about Raw material scarcity this is a trend that for some industries can be considered a reality. Due to the scarcity of raw materials companies are starting to develop new and innovative materials, for instance the use of engineered or faux wood to reduce dependency on real wood.  This change in material has in turn affected the supply chain as faux wood undergoes a different process.  

Reference


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