The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the weaknesses of the supply chains. These networks are rife with effort-intensive, repeatable, and error-prone processes with mistakes ranging from errors in manual data entry to faults in shipping, receiving, inventory management, and more. In essence, the pandemic gave organizations and industries the push they needed to eliminate these weaknesses and improve their supply chain operations to thrive in the post-pandemic world.

Automation of the supply chain was the natural response to building in the wave of efficiencies across the supply chain. With automation, organizations got the silver bullet to eliminate errors, make processes more resilient and gain deeper insights.

Gartner estimates that over 70% of commercial enterprises have automation initiatives in place. These initiatives are, however, often siloed and not aligned with business objectives. Therefore, the outcomes of these initiatives are quite naturally less than optimal.

The Challenge with Automation

Not only does the supply chain need automation, but it also needs to leverage intelligent technologies to navigate limitations that prevent future readiness. Many traditionally automated processes do not enable end-to-end automation. One part of the process benefits from automation, while the others remain dependent on human intervention. This can lead to inconsistencies in data and other errors that impact insights. Automated billing systems, for example, still need manual data entry. This process cannot be considered the most efficient.

The supply chain is a complex process that contains within itself many tasks. End-to-end automation can also be effort intensive and end up increasing complexity when it is approached from a task perspective. As the volume of automation increases, managing the web of tools and processes becomes challenging. Investing in end-to-end automation becomes a challenge since the organization has already invested time, money, and effort into automation efforts.

The objective of automation is not only to reduce human effort but also to deliver greater value by breaking down organizational and departmental silos. For automation efforts to deliver value, they need to be undertaken with technology, process, and business evolution in mind.

Taking a Platform Approach for Supply Chain Automation

The supply chain needs to be fine-tuned to meet the pressing needs of today’s global businesses. Deep insights from a connected supply chain allow organizations to create greater value, eliminate wasteful and time-consuming processes, and inject a wave of efficiency across the system.

The supply chain will also need to adapt to larger, more complex methods of information and product transportation as client bases grow along with consumer expectations. Reports show that optimized supply chains have 15% lower costs and less than 50% inventory holdings.

However, automation efforts can deliver greater value only when they are not siloed or tool-driven. As businesses and organizations become more interconnected, the supply chain must be seamlessly connected to all parts impacted by and dependent on it.

Supply Chain Automation Can No Longer Remain Tool Centric

Managing the entire tools and technology ecosystem can get overwhelming and inefficient as the ecosystem grows in the face of digital transformation. To that end, it is becoming crucial for organizations today to build the technology and processes ecosystem to align with current and future needs. As such, instead of being tool-oriented, supply chain automation will yield better results by taking a platform approach.

A Cohesive Automation Environment

A platform-first approach enables organizations to build a more cohesive automation environment. Connecting different departments, processes and workloads is easier. Unlike a tool-driven approach, a platform approach also means fewer vendors and contracts to manage. Increasing the automation footprint also becomes much easier.

Greater Flexibility to Evolve Easily

One of the greatest benefits of taking a platform approach for supply chain automation is the evolution and flexibility it brings. Instead of staying limited to the capabilities of the tools, a platform approach offers greater customization capabilities and helps organizations connect departments, processes, and workloads seamlessly. It also allows organizations to build hyper-automation capabilities in the supply chain.

Leverage New Technologies for Greater Value

Connecting automated supply chain processes of inventory management with the billing management system, for example, becomes easy using a platform. A comprehensive platform will also offer support to leverage modern-day technologies such as AI, artificial neural network, and deep learning and enable real-time computer vision-based automation. This capability further enhances supply chain automation efforts, ensures better productivity and performance, and provides granular insights.

Computer-vision-based automation, for example, can not only reduce effort and optimize inventory management but can also be used for object dimensioning to automatically capture accurate dimensions of parcels, wherever they are. This same technology can be employed to detect alphabets, numbers, shapes, and code from visual data, monitor the alignment of heavy machinery, parts, product stacks, etc., and even for unidentified object identification.

Conclusion

Today, automation is about increasing efficiency and productivity, identifying opportunities for value creation, and using technology to improve the bottom line while reducing manual efforts. An automation platform can automate the supply chain, leading to higher productivity and improved utilization. It can also become a place to improve operations and drive end-to-end optimization of the supply chain.