The digital transformation of Supply Chains is considerably impacting on the change in production and distribution processes on a planetary scale, especially in the presence of globalized supply chains.
The strengthening of this trend encompasses essential new perspectives for companies wishing to compete and remain profitable in the long term in a dynamic and risky environment.
Among the priorities of managing its role, a company involved in a supply chain must:
- address the operational and financial risks associated with adverse events (Resilience);
- obtain results of economic and financial efficiency that are stable over time in a context of competition on a global scale (Profit);
- increasingly take into account the environmental impact and the renewed need to manifest increased responsibility for the social role (Planet & People);
- support the customs, trends and emerging needs of the consumer (Consumer Experience).
Digital transformation, accompanied by the ever-increasing use of emerging technologies - Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Distributed Ledger, and more - allows to review the management strategy and to seek a more efficient and effective role within a dynamic supply chain context.
Today, for companies, the need to participate in the production-logistics-distribution chains is very evident, gaining ever greater (holistic) visibility of the processes of the supply chain itself. The idea that competition does not develop between individual companies but between "entire supply chains" is getting increasingly consolidated. This phenomenon is increasingly evident on a global scale in all sectors. To achieve such a visibility, the operating organizations must be able to observe processes and phenomena that have an impact on the supply chain business in real time, understanding them and predicting their progress. The aims, reasons and benefits deriving from having greater visibility of the supply chain are numerous and are applied in the response to the transformation needs mentioned above. In general, we can say that this is a new measurable approach to the management of the supply chain enabled by digital technologies.
Transparency and collaboration between partners operating along the supply chain are essential elements to face the numerous organizational and strategic challenges that the new markets will impose in the near future. The new management paradigm makes use of "supply chain information infrastructures" that offer operational organizations and management effective tools to understand and promptly manage their supply chain in order to maximize measurable performance indicators, managing unexpected phenomena more promptly.
Digitization: gaining management visibility
The Supply Chain digitization is realized by introducing an information infrastructure aimed at collecting data from operational activities (which we call events), either along the entire supply chain or for the part of which you want to gain management visibility aimed at specific purposes.
Several supply chain management platforms are emerging as extremely promising infrastructures in terms of their ability to address and solve problems or to introduce innovative and more successful ways of managing the business.
The iChain platform promotes holistic vision (extended visibility in real time) thanks to a combination of advanced technological components and an operational best practice model as a tool to overcome the critical issues of ordinary management and to implement long-term strategies for supply chain managers. The platform provides a graphic, structured, precise, evolved and powerful vision of processes, allowing operators and managers to make informed decisions to ensure compliance with operational and strategic needs, in a data-driven way.