The traditional supply chain model often used in retail distribution is outdated and broken. Customers want more and they want it now but businesses’ inability to step up to the mark can leave customers waiting for product or worse – not waiting and going elsewhere. To match modern customer expectations, business needs to adopt modern methods. Changes of this type are far from easy, however, IoT could hold the key to unlocking the supply chain of the future.
Thanks to the rise in on-demand services and almost anything you want being just a click away, consumers are becoming more and more demanding. In sympathy with this, commerce and industry are responding by doing everything they can to improve the customer experience and get an edge on the competition.
In the best case scenario, the customer will wait for the goods to become available and purchase anyway; in other cases, the customer will shop elsewhere or even give up on the purchase altogether. It’s all too familiar a story and it’s as old as the concept of commerce itself. However, it doesn’t have to be the case. With a combination of IoT (Internet of Things) technology and vertical integration of the order process, businesses can achieve a leaner supply chain and ultimately say goodbye to the phrase, “out of stock”.
The supply chain as we know it
In a traditional supply chain model, the process typically begins with the manufacture of a product. For this to happen, the manufacturer will need to create a bill of materials for the product and order enough raw materials from their suppliers to make enough of the product to meet consumer demand. For this to happen, the raw materials suppliers need to have enough stock themselves to fulfil the order. If this doesn’t happen, production could be delayed which could lead to a lack of stock at the retailers.
Read more at Reducing logistics costs by enabling a pull-based, vertically integrated supply chain through IoT
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