Making Your Supply Chain Future-Proof for 2025 and Beyond

The global supply chain is crucial to the survival of world systems. This is why proper management of the supply chain ensures that goods, services, and people move seamlessly across countries to fulfil international trade. As witnessed in the last two years, global pandemics and wars have adverse effects that alter the workings of the supply chain.

Supply chain disruptions are everyday situations for the global value chain, which relies on raw materials and products. Canal blockages, delayed shipments, unplanned wars, and rising prices affect businesses across countries, mainly when operating on a tight budget. Hence, we have curated verifiable solutions to help stakeholders minimise disruptions and future-proof their supply chain for now and beyond.

Full-scale Digitisation

Gartner’s 2021 Future of Supply Chain survey found that only 1 percent of supply chain leaders have a digital ecosystem, but we expect 23 percent of supply chain leaders to have one by 2025. This commendable feat will improve productivity within the global supply chain.

Creating a cohesive digital strategy with technology and software would provide an adaptive solution to manage global trade, compliance, and distribution activities within the supply chain. Imagine that the over 300 container ports in the world have been entirely digitised and had more contactless ports before COVID-19 hit the globe. It will take up the slack of the total lockdown and lessen the disruption of the supply chain.

Strategic Supplier Partnerships

Business reputations hang on raw material and product availability, which depend on suppliers. Sometimes, countries and suppliers build their trade on comparative cost advantage. However, creating a strategic supplier partnership to bolster the supply chain means the global supply chain should identify producers that consistently deliver timely and quality materials with a competitive price benchmark.

The supply chain needs data analysis and an integrated system to identify suppliers best suited for a smooth-running operation. This will help the global supply chain to monitor suppliers for incidents that could signify unexpected changes and respond before a pattern forms and business is affected.

Automating Supply Chain Management

The global supply chain suffered at the height of the pandemic as stakeholders agreed to unsavoury trade-offs of their inventories to ensure meeting customer needs and sales protection. It is in the best interest of stakeholders within supply chain management to automate their process using blockchain technology, robotics engineering, artificial intelligence, and data analytics to future-proof against unforeseen disasters.

An integrated supply chain network allows for seamless order, payment, transport, and delivery, and following an airtight process is one area where automation is a productivity game-changer. Also, end-to-end visibility of an optimised supply chain management minimises risk and service levels, leading to cost reduction.

Employing Synchromodal Networks

According to Planergy, synchro modality is the logical future of the freight industry as it effectively defends against supply chain disruption. A synchromodal network decides on the most efficient mode and pathway of transportation at each transfer point based on conditions, cost, time, and ethical considerations, such as fuel emissions.

After implementing an integrated end-to-end network, supply chain managers can employ a synchromodal network. This enables them to switch transport modes in response to active events, choosing preferred cleaner and cheaper methods when possible and selecting trucking, shipping, or other transportation modes to avoid delays as changes occur.

In the end, supply chain managers need to adopt digital technology as an effective way to foolproof their supplies, production, and distribution techniques. That is the best solution to future-proof the chain now and beyond.

Sweet Tips from Ally

As technology advances, new trends in the supply chain are also evolving fast. More trends will continue to emerge in the near future, which will help define the direction of warehousing operations.