View On Emerging Technologies: Is 5G revolutionary for supply chains?

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the March-April 2020 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

March-April 2020

Are you ready for NextGen technologies? Just the other day, I had the opportunity to tour one of Amazon’s highly automated robotic fulfillment centers. I expected to be dazzled—and I was. But it wasn’t because of the automation. The tour was a reminder that there’s no question that NextGen technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, robotics, 3D printing and 5G are going to be the differentiators in tomorrow’s supply chain. The question is: Are you ready?

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Advances in technology and the demand for global connectivity has fueled the proliferation of cellular and IoT devices around the world. As video, IoT connections and mobile data traffic continue to grow, existing networks have become congested, creating significant demand for more capacity, higher speeds, improved reliability and reduced latency.

Think about this: According to Cisco, the projection for global mobile data consumption by 2022 is expected to reach about 80 Exabytes (billion gigabytes) per month compared to 20 exabytes per month in 2018. Additionally, Gartner reports roughly 8.4 billion IoT devices used in 2017, and anticipates this number to grow to 20.4 billion IoT devices by 2020, while Business Insider projects more than 64 billion IoT devices by 2025.

In comes 5G to the rescue. 5G is the 5th generation of mobile technology that will deliver more bandwidth, faster speeds (10 Gbps, or around 10 times faster than 4G) and lower latency (1 ms, or around 50 times lower than 4G), all with greater availability and reliability than 4G. 5G will enable intelligent connectivity between people, devices and machines driving digital transformation and propelling us toward a totally interconnected world.

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