A buyer's guide to supply chain management software

Supply chain management continues to evolve

A supply chain that’s successfully managed across design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring is primed to create net value, build a competitive infrastructure, leverage world-wide logistics, and synchronize supply with demand. And one of the best ways to measure supply chain performance globally is with APICS’s industry-standard Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) process model. First introduced in 1996, SCOR has been revised over the years to accommodate industry advancements, updated core competencies, and technological innovations.

The latest version of SCOR (12.0, introduced in 2017), incorporates, among other things, “omni-channel, metadata, blockchain, and other emerging drivers that supply chain professionals use today.” Just as SCOR moved beyond “traditional” supply chain management’s heavy reliance on manual processes, so must the modern supply chain organization. To meet current and emerging supply chain challenges, these organizations need to embrace digital transformation.

Trends in digital supply chain management orchestration

Many organizations rely on legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain planning, and supply chain execution solutions (e.g., transportation and warehouse management systems) to manage supply chain processes—such as those outlined in the SCOR model. Today’s digital supply chain transformation trends, however, require that these solutions evolve.

For the past several years, Gartner has predicted that the top supply chain technology trends would be: artificial intelligence (AI), advanced analytics, the internet of things (IOT), robotic process automation (RPA), autonomous things, digital supply chain twins, immersive experiences, and blockchain. These and other technologies are rapidly invading the supply chain ecosystem. Organizations dependent on physical supply chains need to embark on a digital supply chain transformation or risk elimination from competitors or new market entrants that leverage these new supply chain technologies to create disruptive business models.

The 2019 top supply chain technology trends you can’t ignore:

• Artificial intelligence
• Internet of things
• Autonomous things
• Immersive experience
• Advanced analytics
• Robotic process automation
• Digital supply chain twins
• Blockchain in supply chain

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