Trend 2: Supply Chain Resilience

One thing that COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 spurred was Supply Chain Resilience. Questions were raised of how agile and flexible the value chains were, both from a supply standpoint but also from an autonomy and national security standpoint. The trend to have more regionalized supply chains with production closer to market has been talked about for the last 10 years, but COVID-19 put in the next gear here. The original reason for sourcing from- and off shoring to low labour cost markets and then ship to consumer markets made a lot of sense in a pre-highly automated supply chain world and also to a degree in a pre “green supply chain” world. With increasing level of fully automated manufacturing, the cost of labour becomes a lesser part and it’s rather cost of energy, taxes, ease of doing business, fiscal stability and similar areas that become core in decisions.

3D printing is a technology that will further boost the capabilities of resilience. It is also so that customer request on shorter and shorter lead-times drives revised needs on the supply chains. Other areas we have seen coming up is a “made in home country” sentiment as well as locally produced. The development of IoT, Big data, predictive analytics and AI has enabled totally different levels of speed, transformation, and efficiency. Which is very much enabling more resilient supply chains and supply chains that are perceived as more customer adaptive and personalized, as well as operating more cost-efficiently and with less scrap and oversupply.

Tags: Shipping News / International Shipping News / 5 Global Supply Chain and Logistics trends 2021 / Logistics 2021 / Future of Logistics

 Source: Greencarrier

https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/5-global-supply-chain-and-logistics-trends-2021/