The Supply Chain Workforce of the Future

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the July-August 2017 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

July-August 2017

A few years ago, a Harvard Business Review cover posed the question: What’s the secret to winning in the global economy? The answer: Talent.

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The supply chain is in the midst of an evolution. Digital technologies hold the potential for increasing competitive agility by dramatically changing how businesses design, source, make, move and service products. Most executives understand how essential these changes are to the business and 85% of supply chain executives are already working to introduce new digital capabilities into their operations.

Supply chain “digital trendsetters”—top performers in terms of both profitability and revenue growth—are already transforming their linear operations into digital supply networks that are more connected, intelligent, scalable and rapid than traditional supply chains. These networks enable people and data—as well as materials, products and supplies—to work together across the extended enterprise to meet business objectives. Consider how these trendsetters are raising the bar.

• Trendsetters are designing their supply chain operations around the intersection of suppliers, products and customers. Unlike digital followers, who say that giving customers a unified experience remains their primary supply-chain objective, trendsetters strive to deliver a tailored customer experience: highly individualized, focused products and completely customized services providing buy-anywhere, collect anywhere, return anywhere capabilities via flexible channels.
• Trendsetters are leveraging the full spectrum of digital technologies, investing in analytics, mobility and Cloud. But they also take digital further than digital followers by investing significantly more in the higher-order digital technologies that facilitate hyper-flexibility like Artificial Intelligence, the Industrial Internet of Things and intelligent products.

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