Technology in the DC: The good the bad & the ugly

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: From curing cancer and reversing climate change to solving global peace, technology will restore, save and solve everything that ails us now and in the years to come. Mixed in the over-the-top rhetoric is the promise of efficient and effective supply chains competing supply chain to supply chain.

OK, now let’s get real. Technology is good, don’t get us wrong, but it is not the panacea for all that troubles us— even in the supply chain. It has enabled us to respond to needs and to anticipate what customers will want. And, technology is well documented for having contributed to the bottom lines of organizations from robots in manufacturing, RFID and now APIs. But how effective are we in using technology in our warehouses and distribution centers (DC)? Have we become more efficient—enabling us to do more with less?

And, what does the future look like? Solutions don’t implement themselves. How effectively supply chain managers have implemented supply chain solutions in the past may give us a roadmap to how they will implement solutions in the future.

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