It means reduced costs and improved efficiencies. It means greater speed and scale. It means smarter products and services. It means Industry 4.0. In order to make all this happen, factories need to become more flexible, more intelligent and more efficient – machines, assets and products will start “talking” to each other within the factory but also between the different players. The car manufacturing process is an often-used example. At the moment the car manufacturer assembles the injectors into the engines, the information will also be sent to the injector supplier and to the supplier of the injector supplier – a seamless vertical integration will happen, which allows not only efficiency gains. HOWEVER – I have hardly ever heard about the Industry 4.0 implications on the physical integration among the factories, warehouses, suppliers etc. The supplier of the injector supplier knows now in real-time, when to produce the next batch of components to be delivered to the inj
In a world faced with the prospect of tightening supplies, higher energy costs heightened geopolitical risk, and strained transportation networks, advanced supply chain technologies will become mission-critical for many more companies. The supply chain task is not an enterprise problem; it is an end-to-end network problem involving multiple enterprises. Therefore, the solution does not lie in fixing one link in the chain but in devising a community.