The Visibility Advantage: Mitigating Supply Chain Risks with Real-Time Tracking Technologies

It only took a single container ship to block the Suez Canal for six days. It’s estimated that this resulted in the blocking of around $400 million worth of goods per hour - or $9.6 billion per day. Supply chains around the world descended into chaos. It was yet another wake-up call revealing how something as small as a traffic jam can hobble global business overnight.

Cast your mind back to the global pandemic. It didn’t take long before we saw product shortages, manufacturing delays, transport issues, and facilities shutting down left, right, and center. It was the perfect storm that led to historic vulnerabilities in supply networks.

Many companies were caught off guard. But the pandemic merely uncovered issues that had long been brewing under inefficient legacy systems. Even minor unexpected issues can quickly cascade when supply chains lack resilience, and there is not much evidence that these operators have learned their lesson or done a lot to rectify these frailties.

Yet, the good news is that new technologies centered around supply chain visibility are giving us more ways to minimize these risks moving forward. Real-time tracking provides actionable data to see disruptions coming before they hit, giving key stakeholders along the chain enough time to react and adapt before things get out of hand.

In this post, we will break down the key technologies bringing unprecedented visibility to supply chain operations, while also discussing how implementing these solutions can better position your business against disruptions.

The Risks of Flying Blind

Many supply chain teams still depend on historical data and linear assumptions to make decisions. But guess what? Markets are unpredictable. Customer demands shift on a dime these days. And global events throw major wrenches into even the best-laid plans.

If you lack real-time visibility into every process, you’re essentially flying blind. It becomes almost impossible to sense potential disruptions and pivot appropriately. Instead, issues compound and cause lasting damage by the time you finally detect a problem. Some key threats that limited visibility open companies up to include:

• Stockouts: Inventory shortages prevent you from meeting customer demand. This leads to lost sales, damage to your brand reputation, and opportunities for competitors.
• Excess inventory: Over-ordering stock exposes you to extra holding costs, waste, and write-downs when products expire.
• Logistic delays: Late shipments due to weather, congestion, equipment issues or other transport problems lead to frustrated customers.
• Supply shortages: Lack of raw materials or components results in inability to produce finished goods timely.
• Customs Delays: Shipments held up in customs clearance due to paperwork errors, compliance issues, or unexpected policy changes can lead to late deliveries, added costs, and frustrated customers.
• Facility shutdowns: Power outages, cyberattacks, fires, natural disasters or other events can unexpectedly take operations offline.

By recognizing these risks, we start to see how improved visibility can help safeguard supply chain continuity. There’s no way to guarantee against all disruptions. But real-time tracking goes a long way.

The Tech Stack of Tomorrow's Supply Chains

Thankfully, supply chains are getting a major tech makeover. Cutting-edge innovations in IoT sensors, cloud software, and blockchain now equip us to achieve more visibility across global production and distribution networks. As these digital solutions become more affordable and plug-and-play, adoption is accelerating rapidly. Let's walk through some of the biggest game-changing technologies bringing unprecedented transparency to supply chain operations:

IoT Sensors

Internet of Things (IoT) sensors offer eyes and ears throughout global supply chains. Sensor data delivers granular visibility by monitoring conditions, equipment health, and transport movement. Supply chain teams tap this real-time data for insights to optimize workflows. Sensors come in all shapes and sizes today. Sensor options today include:

• Smart pallets and containers that monitor cargo locations, temperature, humidity levels, shock events and more.
• Machine sensors that track production equipment statistics to predict maintenance needs and prevent downtime.
• Fleet telematics that collects fuel consumption patterns, engine fault alerts, unsafe driving, and other vehicle performance metrics.
• Warehouse sensors that tally inventory levels, equipment utilization rates, worker productivity and storage conditions.

Together, these sensors feed highly precise system-wide data to empower smarter decisions across the board.

Blockchain

Blockchain establishes an unalterable distributed ledger capturing all supply chain transactions. This breakthrough technology significantly improves traceability and truthfulness across processes from start to finish. Blockchain documents critical tracking events, environmental conditions, chain of custody, and more.

All data gets cryptographically sealed in shared ledgers. Supply chain partners operate from a common record with guarantees that transactions remain tamper-proof. This safeguards against fraudulent data manipulation or innocent errors while quickly isolating the root causes of problems.

Advanced Analytics

Massive data pipelines now flow from IoT sensors and blockchain networks. But the sheer technology means little without the capability to analyze flows and pinpoint meaningful patterns. This is where advanced analytics enters the picture.

Analytics solutions employ sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to remove the guesswork and automatically identify risks, inefficiencies and upcoming disruptions. Teams no longer have to manually comb through gigantic datasets. Smart systems run diagnostics around the clock to notify decision-makers and provide corrective recommendations.

Control Towers

Supply chain control towers serve as the central nervous system receiving, processing and initiating responses to visibility inputs. These command centers consolidate and interpret sensor data, blockchain transactions, analytic assessments and legacy ERP information within a single pane of glass. Control towers enable:

• Real-time monitoring of end-to-end supply networks
• Rapid prediction of emerging disruptions
• AI-powered mitigation recommendations
• Collaborative crisis response across partners
• Proactive alerts and workflow optimizations

Taken together, the control tower acts as the brain commanding predictable, efficient and resilient supply chain execution.

Harnessing the Visibility Advantage

Okay, now let’s finally talk about how to actually harness the power of supply chain visibility to your advantage. Deploying all these tracking tools and analytics is just the starting point. Technology alone won't give you resilient operations. It’s likely you will need to make some big cultural shifts in your company to truly leverage the visibility you want to benefit from.

• Adopt end-to-end mindset: Piecemeal visibility creates little value. Implement technologies to trace products across your whole supply ecosystem.
• Involve cross-functional teams: Break down silos. Procurement, manufacturing, logistics and sales all own responsibility for uptime.
• Define key risk triggers: Pinpoint exact thresholds indicating a disruption is brewing so systems know which events to prioritize.
• Build response playbooks: Map out contingency protocols so your team never wastes time figuring out the next steps.
• Conduct simulation analysis: Model hypothetical disruption scenarios through digital twin simulations to uncover weak points.
• Enforce data transparency: Partners must openly share operational intel for the collective good of resilience.
• Incentivize prescriptive actions: Encourage employees to follow analytics advice and continually improve.

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