What’s the Next Phase of Supply Chain Evolution?

The reworking of supply chains has a simple purpose of fitting the new world economy’s needs and demands. And freight data sharing platforms had already started before the mess of 2020 began. Additionally, the shift towards digital media and reinvented processes of global supply chains continues still today. Supply chain evolution is highly focused on market sub-segments, especially on those within the middle class. According to Supply Chain Management Review, “this matters a lot in a world where the population of middle-class consumers will reach 5.5 billion or over 60% of world population by 2030—a phenomenal growth from 1 billion middle-class people comprising 20% of world population in 1985. Middle-class consumption will soon comprise one-third of global GDP. Five-and-a-half times as many middle-class consumers means far too many consumers to be efficiently served by a global factory.” These figures hint at why supply chain evolution is essential. It ensures shippers can meet consumers’ needs and demands to keep up with the global market shift.

The Driving Forces of Digital Transformation

The move towards digital processes and platforms is essential for supply chain evolution, and behind the movement are four driving forces that necessitate such a transformation. They include the following:

Competition. Competition drives innovation and keeps businesses on their toes, especially within the supply chain network.
E-commerce. There has long been a steady push towards virtual processes for supply chains, and recent world events make it all the more necessary to embrace e-commerce.
Visibility. Another critical part of supply chain evolution and growth in the modern age relies heavily on improving the network’s visibility.
Speed of delivery. For most supply chains and transportation management teams, accurate and timely delivery is the ultimate way to keep customers satisfied.

The Digital Twin Is Getting Smarter and Adaptive

There is a digital side for every aspect of life, which is often unseen and largely ignored. It is the digital twin, the virtual symbiote, that exists for just about everything in existence. The digital twin is a large part of the supply chain evolution process. Think about it. Shopping and purchases have a face-to-face component as well as a virtual component. Deliveries and shipments can be managed with a physical paper trail or with a digital and automated platform. The digital twin can no longer be ignored and will no longer be relegated to the corner as it is becoming more and more essential for the success of supply chain evolution.

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It’s been written that a career in supply chain management can be like climbing a mountain.

While there is often a map for the path forward in professions like accounting, medicine and the law, in supply chain management – as with mountaineering – there are any number of paths that can reach the summit.

Those were among the findings from a research series conducted for the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and published in the July/August 2015 issue of Supply Chain Management Review, and reinforced by research conducted by McKinsey & Company and Kuhne Logistics University.

The latter, for instance, found that while many supply chain management executives had experience in logistics, procurement and sales/marketing, “… a surprising number of supply chain executives are appointed without any previous exposure to SCM…in our sample, supply chain executives spent 88% of their previous career span outside the SCM function.”

Are those findings consistent with readers of Supply Chain Management Review and members of APICS Supply Chain Council? And, if so, who is today’s supply chain manager? And, how did he – or she – navigate to their position on the mountain?

Did they start out in the supply chain going back to their college days, or, as in the McKinsey study, did they come into the profession from other parts of the organization?

Moreover, what are their duties today and how do they see the job changing?

Read more at A Portrait of the Supply Chain Manager

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