Are you ready for a digital supply chain? Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing the manufacturing end, while its offshoot Logistics 4.0 is doing the same for the shipping end of the chain. But what about all the connecting pieces in the middle? Is your company ready to adopt the technologies and techniques that will fully digitize your end-to-end supply chain, or are you still using pen and paper to track your warehouse inventory? With the continued adoption of these technologies, the future of the supply chain is going digital, and there are a number of reasons digital will rule. Already, we’re seeing major inroads on the part of IoT sensors, RFID tags, smart pallets and GPS tracking leading the charge. Is your company ready to adopt and adapt? Or will you find yourself left behind as your competitors step into the digital gap?

One of the most common metaphors you hear for forecasting in supply chain management is that it’s like the rear-view mirror in your car: you need to understand what’s happening behind you, but it’s not necessarily enough information to keep you slamming into the car in front of you. As the supply chain has evolved, however, forecasting has evolved along with it. So, for that matter, have cars: in the modern supply chain, forecasting can encompass not just the rear-view mirror, but the back-up camera, and even the smart sensors that alert you when you’re getting too close to another car.

These new processes that move beyond the scope of the rear view mirror use technology to take in additional information, and then spit out new insights for the driver to use—from immediate course-correct notifications to more granular data about when you’re going to hit the curb while parallel parking. In each case, digitization has played a big role in giving you a more comprehensive overview of events that are about to take place. In an industrial context, we might think of these digital enhancements as things like IoT (internet of things) devices and other smart sensors that provide live information to planners. In this way, forecasting becomes more thoroughly integrated into the way that businesses make decisions and optimize their supply chain management. And it’s lucky for us that it does so, because accurate forecasts are becoming more important than ever in the world of supply chain planning.  

The automotive industry is no stranger to technology. It’s also no stranger to the rapid pace of change that’s overtaken global manufacturing in the early 21st-century. And when it comes to planning and organizing your entire automotive supply chain, advanced planning and scheduling (APS) is the key that will unlock increased ROI and decreased lag times. APS represents a sea change from traditional methods that looked at materials and production capacity as separate things, a view that often led to incompatible plans. Adoption rates of APS in the automotive sector are on the rise, paralleling the rise of make-to-order and additive manufacturing; and the increasing complexity of the automotive manufacturing world as a whole. And it’s that last factor that we’re going to focus on today, the increasing complexity of the automotive world and how APS can help. Whether by assisting with inventory leveling or by helping planners better schedule materials deliveries, APS can be a boon at every stage of the automotive manufacturing supply chain.

Logistics 4.0 is an offshoot of the larger trend in manufacturing known as Industry 4.0. Think of it as being to the supply chain what Industry 4.0 is to the factory, and you’ll begin to see the potential for massive disruption (of the good kind). As such, there is considerable overlap in the technologies at play. For example, the same IoT sensors that are revolutionizing preventative maintenance on the production line are also revolutionizing how the purchasing department determines what supplies to order. And the ability to automate production processes is being mirrored in the way those orders are being placed and the shipments themselves are being handled when they arrive. With the arrival of smart pallets, shelves, trucks, containers—even entire warehouses—logistics providers are able to create complete transparency up and down the value chain.

Lean manufacturing is a topic of choice these days. Discussions abound on everything from what works and what doesn’t, to how to make what’s not working work for you, to how to implement each individual segment of a lean architecture in a particular niche of the manufacturing world. That’s not our goal today. Instead, we want to cover one specific piece of the lean puzzle—every part every interval, or EPEI. We want to ensure you have a clear picture of this methodology, what it is and isn’t, whether it’s something you should consider implementing at your factory, and, finally, how Industry 4.0 is affecting its place in the value chain. Many of the issues addressed below are applicable to lean manufacturing more widely, so you can take the information presented and apply it to your situation and see how emerging technology might help your bottom line.

As we enter an increasingly digitized era in supply chain management, owing to new technologies from IoT sensors to real-time freight tracking, the hurdles that face manufacturers and logistics providers alike are becoming ever more complex: software integration are becoming increasingly difficult, longstanding information silos are suddenly becoming huge operational hurdles, and increased globalization is adding complexity to virtually ever corner of the supply stream. What waits on the other side of those challenges? A world of increased connectivity and the promise of the Industry 4.0 revolution. Anyone who’s been following the global automotive supply chain the past several years know that, now more than ever, success is often a matter of turning mission critical data into concrete business insights.In the spirit of turning data into insights, here are a few statistics that might shed some light on the current state of supply chain management.

Imagine a scenario: Your company has contracted a shipper or freight forwarder to complete a delivery of parts to one of your customers. Because of extensive data-collection during your research and development for the parts, you know that high temperatures over a prolonged period of time can increase the part’s failure rate. As a result of a shipping delay, these parts spend too much time in a container that’s not properly temperature controlled. 

Pop quiz: when’s the last time, either in a personal or a professional capacity, that you made a purchase from a business that did not have a website? Sure, you may have wandered into a charming little brick and mortar store and made an impulse purchase, or maybe you did a bit of antiquing, but I’ll bet that for most major purchases in recent memory you would have been loath to place your trust in a business with no online presence. This is, of course, with good reason. A web presence allows you to read product reviews from other customers, gives you the resources to make more informed purchasing decisions, and lends legitimacy to their enterprise. Once you’ve experienced the added conveniences of a digital business, it’s unlikely you’ll be eager to go back to the old way of doing things.

Discussions around the effects of climate change have been among the dominant topics of conversation in the first two decades of the 21^st century. As global leaders in government and business consider what steps must be taken in order to ensure the health of our natural resources and ecosystems, businesses can almost certainly expect changes to the way that supply chains operate. Many within the worlds of manufacturing and shipping are beginning to track their carbon footprints and overall environmental impacts, but still others are unsure of the potential considerations involved. If you’re in the latter camp, we hope that these four facts will help give you a grounding in conversations around green footprint optimization.  

Just as the modern factory is adding new, intelligent technologies in order to create connected, interoperable workflows, the modern supply chain is rapidly becoming smarter, more networked, and more technologically advanced. Though the so-called fourth industrial revolution gets most of the attention, there is another revolution occurring simultaneously within the world of logistics, and it’s changing the way that products make their way from production facilities to customers. In the spirit of Industry 4.0, some have taken to referring to this new logistics paradigm as Logistics 4.0—but what exactly does this term mean?