The self-driving supply chain: inevitable? 

The ultimate goal of any business is to deliver its product and service to the customer on time and in the right quantity. Supply chain management plays a significant role in achieving this goal. The supply chain of any business is a complex and dynamic network of integrated processes, people, and technology to fulfill customer demand. There are different players within the supply chain of any products: suppliers, wholesalers, manufacturers, 3PL service providers, etc. Successful supply chain management contains the efficient management of each part in which the right strategic, tactical, and operational decisions are taken and implemented at the right time.

The concept of digital twins has been around for a long time in terms of modeling and simulation. However, the two are vastly different. The digital twin is a living-learning model, as described by Colin Parris, CTO of GE Digital. Thus, it is continuously running and updating itself based on data received from the subject of the twin. 

As supply chains are becoming increasingly more complex, managed services are gaining importance as this allows businesses to profit from expertise in those fields they need it, as they need it. Analytics demands will grow with increasing complexity, and managed services enable a business to focus on their core objectives, scale up and down as necessary while receiving support – ongoing or project-based – as they need it. Today, we're looking at a project in Inventory Management as a Service that we have implemented at one of our customers. 

We live in a changing world, where in the future, supply chains will no longer be managed in a linear fashion, as suggested by the SCOR model of Source-Make-Deliver chains. In this article, we present our vision for the future of supply chains and the topics that will determine their competitiveness. The future of supply chains will be characterized by growing business networks and cloud-enabled ecosystems. Companies will be members in multiple ecosystems and may play multiple roles. For instance, an OEM could act as a supplier, an engineering contractor, and a participant in a marketplace he has created with competitors.

All supply chains are lagging behind their optimal performance. This is what we call the supply chain performance gap. With the first nine articles of this series, we analyzed the issues of Supply Chains lagging behind their potential. Today we will close the journey and ask ourselves what the characteristics of a high-performing Supply Chain are and how we can make a difference. In 2016 the magazine Inbound Logistics asked several CEOs and Supply Chain executives: "What are the characteristics of a great supply chain?". These are the success factors, as well as possible reasons for failure. 

Today’s internal complexity article concludes the insight into the eight root causes of the supply chain performance gap. Internal complexity means complexity resulting from inside the company such as organizational structure, type of organization, number and types of processes, internal and external interfaces, corporate culture, business activities (e.g., product and service development), and mergers and acquisitions. The good news is that internal complexity can be directly influenced and reduced through different actions, from executive decisions on business and corporate structure to processes, personnel, and products.

Our planet and its people face the greatest challenge in history – climate catastrophe. The demands placed upon natural resources by businesses and their supply chains are a huge factor in causing climate change; that's why we know supply chasins have to become more sustainable. Finding ecological balance in our supply chains is now vital to avoid destroying our environment beyond repair.

In today's globalized world, regulatory complexity is one of the root causes to lacking supply chain performance. This article presents the sixth of eight root causes we defined for supply chains lagging behind their potential. You will find an overview of all root causes in the first post of our ten-part series. For more details, jump to the related article. 

Today, we give you an insight into our 5th root cause: the complexity of supplier network. In the previous articles, we already addressed the root causes of product portfolio complexity, speed of innovation, new types of competition, and multi-channel sales complexity.

The complexity of supply networks is determined by the diversity of supplier relationships and their changes over time. The main drivers for the diversity of the network are the number of suppliers involved and the topology of the network, which is expressed in the number of levels, the degree of networking, and the types of relationships. Examples of supplier relationships are direct material suppliers, logistics services providers, contract manufacturers, engineering contractors, equipment vendors, and professional services providers. In addition to the structural complexity, the geographical location and thus political and social structures have an additional influence on the complexity of the supplier network.

Today we can observe new types of competition emerging in established market environments closely related to business model innovation and the use of new technologies. Thus, the existing players need to deal with new types of competition to sustain or even strengthen their position. Consequently, "new types of competition" are considered as the emergence of innovative approaches to gain competitive advantages or market share. This is achieved either by generating new customer needs or by better serving existing ones.