Supply chain technology critical for dealing with issues – TechTarget

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Supply chains are facing a number of challenges, and companies are looking to advanced technology to address the problems.
A new Gartner survey highlights attitudes about supply chain technology by practitioners, and underpins the research firm’s findings about the top supply chain technology themes for the next few years. Gartner said it received about 350 responses from professionals directly involved in supply chain operations in organizations across industries, geographies and size.
Conventional wisdom may claim that the COVID-19 pandemic caused the current supply chain disruption, said Dwight Klappich, research vice president at Gartner. However, the survey indicates that supply chain professionals believe the pandemic exposed already existing supply chain vulnerabilities and amplified the effects.
“That’s why two years into this now we’re still seeing some of these issues,” Klappich said. “Now there’s the war in Ukraine, rising energy prices and inflation, and they’ve all put pressures on supply chains.”
In the survey, more than one-third of respondents (34%) said that adapting to new technology will be the most important strategic change for supply chain organizations in the next five years.
“It’s not like in the past, where technology is viewed as tools that they use to do their day-to-day jobs,” Klappich said. “Now it’s really fundamental to their business. [Supply chain leaders] are putting a lot more emphasis on technology.”
There are eight significant supply chain technology themes that fall into three categories: automation, intelligence and resilience, according to Klappich.
Companies implement automation technologies to deal with supply chain labor challenges, such as trying to drive more efficiency and productivity as workforces shrink. Gartner identified the automation technologies as the following:
Intelligence technologies are being implemented to improve the response speed and quality of supply chain decisions. Gartner identifies the top intelligence technologies as:
Resilience technologies are intended to improve security, collaboration and the ability to respond to disruptions. Gartner identifies the top resilience technologies as:
Companies have invested heavily in supply chain technology during the past 40 years, and those systems are for the most part doing what they are intended to do, Klappich said. However, companies are now looking for technologies that can solve new problems as quickly and effectively as possible.
“They are investing in emerging technology, but they’re not just investing and playing around with it,” he said. “They are adopting these technologies and using them to drive better business value — it’s not just nice-to-have stuff anymore.”
New technologies like advanced analytics can help manage supply chain issues, but they can be somewhat limited, according to supply chain expert Zachary Collier, an assistant professor of management at Radford University.
Analytics can look at past events and help make predictions about what may happen in the future, but it may not be able to see one-off “black swan” events that affect supply chains, Collier said. Because of this, companies need to adopt good risk management practices along with technologies.
For example, companies may need to have extra inventory to absorb shortages, or rely on a pool of suppliers instead of relying on a single supplier for important components or materials, he said.
“What’s really important is how you react and quickly bounce back from disruption,” Collier said.
Although companies are adopting new supply chain technologies, there are indications that it will take time for the investments to pay off, according to a recent survey report from PwC.
In the PwC survey of supply chain professionals, 80% of respondents said that investments in digital supply chain technologies have not yet delivered expected results.
This is largely because deployments of these technologies take longer than expected and are more expensive than anticipated, said Matt Comte, operations transformation practice leader at PwC.
“It’s requiring a higher level of functional business investment in time to make those things successful,” Comte said. “They’ve got huge problems, and by and large they’re not seeing the value returned that they need on their tech investments.”
This creates an environment where companies might think it’s too risky to push too heavily into new technologies but may deploy some on the edges, he said.
However, there’s no doubt that companies will continue to invest in technologies that can help with supply chain problems, Comte said.
“We’re in an unprecedented time of supply chain and manufacturing,” he said. “The headwinds will continue, and the organizations that come out better are ones that can meet their current demands from customers while putting a firm foot into the capabilities they need in the future.”
Jim O’Donnell is a TechTarget news writer who covers ERP and other enterprise applications for SearchSAP and SearchERP.
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