Does The Always-On Supply Chain Consume More Electricity?

Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.

 

The almost-always on-point Material Handling Institute has identified technologies that enable the notion of always on.  They include: robotics; autonomous vehicles; the ubiquitous cloud; optimization tools;  predictive analytics; wearable, mobile, technology; sensors and auto-ID; and 3D printing.

Cool!

They've translated these evolving tools and enablers into characteristics of new supply chains: less-relevant geography and physical space; abandoning the management of scarcity in favor of managaing availability; two-way information flow, independent of one-way physical flow; the tyransformation of customers into data creators; replacing physical goods (inventories, products) with information; and integration of these characteristics into collaborative networks.

Way cool!

But, the well-reasoned collection of interesting thoughts undershoots, imho, the real impact.  You see, supply chain management (SCM) is no longer a matter of execution, based on planning, and using continually improving tools.

Today, we recognize that SCM is strategy with a new dress on; SCM is the business.  It is about using predeictive analytics to approach the marketplace.  It is about using smart technology to do smart business.  It's about shooting past the nuts and bolts, however well-designed, to reach targets that leaders set out to hit in the dead center.

Contemporary SCM is the difference between sub-orbital space flight and a mission to the moon - or beyond.