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Logistics and supply chain is over a decade behind other industries, and needs to get “ahead of the curve” in order to compete with sector disruptors like Amazon, according the co-founder of 7bridges, an artificial intelligence-based software provider for supply chains.
Speaking to Logistics Manager Phil Ashton, chief executive at 7bridges, said: “The whole of the logistics industry can fairly well be summarised as 10 to 15 years behind other industries in terms of digitisation. It is driven off paper and manuals and standard operating procedures.”
He also warned that the amount of knowledge locked up in individuals working in key roles in the sector was “extremely high” and that supply chain had been “systematically underinvested area” as for most businesses it was just seen as a cost of doing business.
“With our customers we say that they have exactly all the information they need to automate what they are doing” he said. “The starting point for most businesses was web1.0, to take processes that were on paper and put them online. We basically said you’ve got to leapfrog this and get ahead of the curve, and that is looking at the way Amazon operates even in your supply chain.
“That means taking that data and using it to make the decisions that you are currently devolving to every individual, who is having to make every single decision in a completely disintegrated fashion. They are making it in a siloed, isolated way from every other decision made in the business. That is terrible. You don’t want that. Read more
Source: LOGISTICS MANAGER
