Supply Chain Discussion: Today's Supply Chain Priorities: Where's the Tech Spend?

In this discussion, Russell Goodman from SupplyChainBrain talks with Carly West, senior director analyst at Gartner. She says that supply chain leaders are expected to increase investment in technologies over the next two years, but they must prioritize what they want to implement.

Notwithstanding concerns about inflation, chief financial officers, boards of directors, CEOs and chief supply chain officers seem to be of one mind, West says: The top objectives for this year and next are technology innovation and prioritization.

“The goal we're seeing is investing in new business models, gaining competitive advantages, optimizing their processes and their people. We're seeing this intersection between people and machines, using things like AI, next-generation humanoid robots  and systems. We're seeing this massive intersection where people are investing in technology or machines to enable the humans more.” - Carly West

An example she gives is as follows, once a warehouse management system drops an order to the order management system, robots, with picking instructions on their iPads, take a bin to the picking location. Employees fill the bin, which is then off to the pack location.

“It saves a lot of time for the people walking around the warehouse. It's not replacing humans; it's just enabling them to work faster and better.”

Additional investment is going into protecting data. West says data invasion and cyber extortion are rampant.

“The impact is huge. We're seeing a real interest in enabling technology, but also a real crackdown in keeping it safe.”

She says 66% of businesses say they have experienced cyber attacks, with more than 80% claiming to have suffered significant revenue loss.

Source: Supplychainbrain