The Blume Global team attended Gartner’s Supply Chain Symposium/XPO 2024, where top supply chain organizations navigate through the turbulence by solving present-day issues and positioning themselves for long-term success.
We asked our team members to provide a snapshot of their takeaways from this years’ events, and this is what they had to say:
Blume talks shop with Blume Orchestration solution
Shippers around the world are facing challenges in planning their supply chain owing to constant changes in demand, geopolitical issues, inflationary pressures, supply shortages etc. As a result of this, brand owners often fall prey to mismanaged inventory and incorrect order forecast leading to increased inventory costs and poor customer experience.
Blume’s Senior Solutions Consultant Brendan Reilly lead the product session, “Order orchestration managing global demand fluctuations,” where he discussed the impact of implementing an order orchestration solution suite will have on streamlining order management and supplier collaboration.
Blume Orchestration enables supply chain professionals to see the complete picture of the lifecycle from the time the order is placed with the supplier to delivery.
Blume establishes visibility’s role in minimizing production issues
Anders Maudal, and John Brennan lead and hosted the stage session, “Minimizing production woes via visibility.” They covered how with today’s globally dispersed supply base, manufacturing companies face many challenges, creating costly supply chain disruptions and production delays that threaten revenue. Outsourced logistics introduces another layer of complexity, amplifying the need for robust strategies to maintain consistent visibility and actionable control over inbound operations.
Maudal and Brennen discussed the critical importance of leveraging inbound visibility and how control towers reduce production risk, while preparing the way for AI applications.
Gartner discusses CSCOs strengthening their strategy
From uncertainty, economic volatility and recent geopolitical events, CSCOs and supply chain experts are finding themselves challenged by battling the changing industry landscape.
What is their strategy in addressing this issue?
Gartner stated that CEOs, boards of directors and CSCOs are prioritizing technology initiatives in 2024 and plan to increase investment in digital capabilities. Gartner’s Senior Director Analyst Carly West stated, “82% of CSCOs believe their organization will increase their investment in supply chain technology over the next two years."
She also states the following trends will be taking 2024 by storm: cyber extortion, supply chain data governance, end-to-end sustainable supply chains, AI-enabled vision systems, augmented connected workforce, composite AI, next-generation humanoid working robots, machine customers.
What is needed to drive sustainable growth
As for driving sustainable productivity growth for the supply chain, it has been mostly stagnant since 2015. In contrast, focus on supply chain value has increased in recent years, and report, “45% of supply chain leaders anticipate that objectives, goals and incentives that conflict with other parts of the business will be the biggest challenge in the next one to three years.”
For CSCOs to enable the sustainable growth, they need to focus on:
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Evolving human economic value. Energize people and networks to sense, connect, innovate and respond to the shifting environment.
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Rethinking digital economic value. Use technology to amplify productivity, partnership and the orchestration of decision making around your assets.
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Creating resource economic value. Mobilize the capital, material and other inputs of the supply chain.
At Blume Global, we are excited to remain on the frontlines of the developing supply chain and to see what the future has in store. Are you interested in learning how Blume’s solutions are helping advance operations? Learn more: https://www.blumeglobal.com/.