What does Supply Chain in 2030 look like? Video Interview

The next Supply Chain Insights Global Summit will be held September 6th – 8th, 2022, at the Westin Washington Dulles Airport in Herndon, Virginia. This event will bring together supply chain leaders and professionals to help companies think differently and drive new outcomes while imagining Supply Chain in 2030.

In the lead-up the event, Founder of Supply Chain Insights (SCI), Lora Cecere, has been speaking to technologists that will attend the event and sharing their insights via the SCI Digital Showcase. Alex Pradhan, Product Strategy Leader at John Galt Solutions, spoke with Lora leading up to the SCI Global Summit.

To envision the future for supply chains, and what the landscape will look like in years to come, Lora asked Alex to share her views on what Supply Chain in 2030 looks like.

Alex pointed out that companies are nowadays operating in an environment characterized by growing uncertainty and volatility, arguing that “decisions need to be made a lot faster”. She said that “supply chains need to fundamentally shift away from a very traditional way of thinking, and using very traditional rigid tools, so that they can support a lot of that uncertainty and that volatility.”

Alex highlighted 3 key areas that are shaping the future of the supply chain:

Automation of data.
Alex explained that companies are dealing with copious amounts of data in highly interconnected networks, and the focus must be on leveraging automation to efficiently process and optimize all the information, to turn data into actionable insights. At John Galt Solutions, one of the priorities is to continuously bring in market data and to further develop capabilities in the Atlas Planning Platform to translate all that data into efficient supply and demand strategies.
Fusion of the physical and digital world.
Major challenges and disruptions in recent years have forced supply chain planners to re-think their supply chain network to understand what they can be in control of. The need to merge the physical world with the digital environment is becoming more important to gain full visibility of the network. As Alex explained, the emerging concept of the ‘digital supply chain twin’ is an example of how companies can consolidate the physical and digital network to enable connection and collaboration across the entire supply chain.
Talent and the new generation of planners.
Alex brought attention to the reality that the future supply chain leaders will be digital natives who are likely to demand more from advanced technical capabilities – such as machine learning and artificial intelligence – and expect to gain more from these tools in a way that is easy and intuitive to support their processes and accelerate their supply chain transformation.