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If you’ve been shopping recently and found an empty shelf where your favorite cereal or ice cream is usually stocked, you know that the global supply chain is facing some serious hiccups right now.
The global supply chain has always been a delicate and complex system, which has only been further complicated recently by an ongoing global pandemic and war. An estimated 90 percent of the world’s goods are shipped by sea via roughly 60,000 cargo vessels. The largest cargo vessels carry 24,000 containers. At that scale, it’s not hard to understand why everything from the coffee you drank this morning to the microchip in the device you are reading this on can be lost or delayed.
There have been problems with supply chains long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past few decades, businesses made investments in information technology that helped improve the flow of goods around the world. IT investments in ERP systems, EDI exchanges, and standards such as ISO 9001 helped make global supply chains more efficient. But as the modern-day shopper can attest, there is more work to do.
Supply chain adaptability, agility
Today, up to 80% of critical business data now lives outside a company’s four walls. Suppliers, manufacturing sites, distributors, wholesaler dealers — there are too many parties trying to coordinate their transactions using disparate systems that don’t communicate well with each other. This situation creates a host of problems, because every one of these businesses requires critical, accurate and timely data about the goods they’re transacting, as well as information on any incidents that could have serious implications for their supply chains, customers and individual brand reputations. With the increased complexity of the global supply chain and deep dependencies among suppliers and…
