Disruptive Technologies in Supply Chain

During the holiday season in 2015, Amazon released a video of the Amazon Prime Air drone designed for the home delivery market.

By using drones, Amazon could increase sales during the last days of the holiday season when, for instance, it is too late to make deliveries with conventional parcel delivery services while shoppers were about to prefer stores.

Industry like health care industry is also experimenting high-speed drones. Students at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands rigged a defibrillator and a webcam to a drone and made it deliverable to patients with cardiac arrest faster than an ambulance could reach the scene. Similarly, after the Haitian earthquake in 2012 drones were used to deliver small aid packages in remote disaster-hit areas.

While technical difficulties and legal challenges for drones remain, the technology will find its place in supply chain management.

3D: Cutting Out the Middleman

The key advantage of 3D printing is speed: With on-demand manufacturing supply chains become less complex, materials and components are supplied, as needed, eliminating the need for excess inventory, and significantly reducing related costs. Given myriad of advantages, various industries ranging from fashion to automotive are using3D printing to create products on demand.

For example, the use of 3D printing by California-based aerospace company SpaceX led to the construction of the emergency escape rockets on its new manned Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX developed materials, quickly and efficiently, that can with stand the demands of space travel. The lead-time reduction has reduced cost and enabled SpaceX to outstrip NASA in winning contracts for space station supply chain.

Cognitive Calculation:

New developments in cognitive calculation and smart computing can reduce the need for human contributions in supply chain management

Baxter, a robot developed by Rethink Robotics for collaborative industrial applications, is a classic example of cognitive calculation and artificial intelligence (AI) application in the supply chain. Using advanced AI, Baxter is “manually trainable by in-house staff, reducing the time and cost of third party programmers [and is] suitable for a range of applications and re-trainable across lines and tasks,” according to its manufacturer.
Therefore, one robot alone can handle line loading, machine tending, packaging, and materials handling. Furthermore, when it finishes a task at one particular station, it can be easily deployed to another station and trained to conduct the next task.

Applying these technologies within supply chains means that robots can perform monotonous tasks and free up skilled labor for more value-added tasks.

Big Data/Predictive Data Analytics:

Technology plays a vital role in the foundation of the supply chain of prominent organizations. For instance, Walmart has the largest information technology infrastructure of any private company in the world. Its state-of-the-art technology and network design allow Walmart to accurately forecast demand, track and predict inventory levels, create highly efficient transportation routes, and manage customer relationships and service response logistics.

Big Data has certainly changed the supply chain industry. For example, using incoming Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data from its network of service stations and convenience stores, a fuel retailer knows in near real-time what its fuel product mix and consumption rates are in each area of its geographical territory.

Armed with such information, retailers are able to achieve better revenue positioning because product offers can be instantaneously changed to respond to customer demand shifts.